What game were you waiting for for YEARS to come out and then you get an announcement; a small release date. The date is coming closer. Trailers are looking great if not a bit...off. You don't care. You play the game. It's kind of strange but you just keep going to see how it is. It doesn't get better it gets worse. You can't stop until your just in the fetal position drowing in your puddle of tears

Okay, so it doesn't have to fit all those scenarios, but what's a game that really let you down? Mine is without a doubt Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I could make a better game than that pile of crap. Worst part is, there probably won't be a sequel ever again. It's just going to remain a stain as a sequel to one of my favorite games ever

Tiberian Twilight was a big one for me and does a good job of illustrating the conservative nature of a lot of gamers when it comes to their favorite series. A new game in a series is generally expected to adhere to certain core elements of the series. Innovation and change, while not inherently bad, are welcome only in moderation. Tiberian Twilight abandoned the resource-gathering and base-building mechanic that was a staple of the Command and Conquer games. It also forced players to unlock most of the content. In previous games, you had pretty much the full arsenal in Skirmish mode, and in campaign mode, a certain unit/building was accessible in certain missions no matter what.

This game was supposed to be the great conclusion of the Tiberium saga, yet this "conclusion" abandoned pretty much everything that gave the saga its appeal in the first place. To be fair, I started to have my doubts about the game once news of the changes started coming out, but it was still a huge disappointment, especially after a great game like Tiberium Wars. Its poor performance has also left the series as a whole with an uncertain future.

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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

It just didn't live up to the legacy of the past games, they tried to cram all the characters into one game whereas previously it took 2 games and gave 4 characters plenty of focus in those games so that they all had their individual moments which is why it was great when they came together. Then Dark Dawn comes around, rams everyone in and we end up with pointless characters like Himeko who probably has about as much dialogue for all her time in the game as this post. Then it's hinting at a sequel at the end and due to mixed feedback I'm afraid we won't get it.

I'd say FFXIII but I didn't get it new so I'd heard all the mixed feedback about it's release and was ready for something to go wrong.

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I may be hated but I dont care. Mass Effect 3.

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I guess you could say that it was a "dark" point in the series!
...
......I'll let myself out.

Anyway, a game I found really disappointing was Batman: Arkham Origins. After Arkham City, I was excited for the next Arkham game. However, the original developer, Rocksteady, wasn't involved with Origins' development, which was an initial red flag. The big problem was that a lot of things were recycled in Origins, and a lot of other things weren't as good as the other Arkham games. I really can't wait for the final Arkham game, Batman: Arkham Knight, when it comes out in fall with Rocksteady returning!

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This. All my this. Sticker Star has the dubious honour of being the only game I've ever traded in.

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I wish I could have done that with Tiberian Twilight, but because it's a CD rather than a cartridge, the store wouldn't take it back. So I used it as a coaster until the time came for me to move out of college, at which point it went in the trash.

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Sticker Star is that bad? I've read generally good reviews from critics, although I've read awful reviews from people that aren't critics.

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I'll quote myself here:



1) Lack of funny or witty dialogue. You know, the bread and butter of Paper Mario games. I may not have liked Super Paper Mario, but I can at least say that the dialogue was still pretty good, despite my distaste of the gameplay.
2) Obtuse puzzles. Basically boss fights are like this: Let's randomly throw in an enemy, give no hints about what sticker to use to beat them, GOOD LUCK!
3) Emphasis on avoiding fights: There's absolutely no need to fight any enemies in this game. They don't give badges when they die (and even if they do, you're probably using up more badges to beat them than what you're collecting), you don't get EXP, and... basically, all enemies do in this game are to make you lose health.
4) Boring enemies, characters, and level designs: Let's strip out all the interesting characters, and replace EVERYTHING with Generic Toads! Also, new enemies? Screw that, let's just put GOOMBAS or KOOPA TROOPAS or MARIO ENEMIES WE'VE SEEN BEFORE instead! And let's use generic designs we've seen before for levels! And while we're doing that, let's get rid of DIALOGUE! Because, who needs that anyways? We'll just make Bowser GRUNT EVERYTHING instead!

Those are my reasons for disliking Sticker Star. It's not even about the gameplay changes (the sticker combat was pretty interesting, actually). It's just its implementation, as well as the removal of core Paper Mario features that just makes this game soulless, bland, and made me quit pretty soon in the game because I just felt like "**** it, why am I even playing this anymore?"

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Dangan Ronpa.

Ace Attorney-styled closed circle murder mysteries with super-interesting character designs? Sounds great! And then it ended up being... Dangan Ronpa. Urgh...

The worst part is that nobody else seems to agree with my objectively 100% correct opinion, and terrible DR games just keep on getting made...! Why world, why?!


loljk. it's actually dual destinies

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Sticker star... Ugh.
And to some extent Mario kart 7, i don't know why series i love have a habit of feeling dumbed down on the 3DS.

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Maybe because its not 100% correct and because its only your opinion.

I enjoyed the 1st game very much especially each characters interesting personality and the funny dialog between each characters especially during the free time events. I can't say anything about SDR2 since I havn't played it but I find the character design for each character to be more interesting than the first game.

More a Disappointing Encounter in a videogame... but the confrontation with Karma. I dunno, hearing what a God of Prosecutors he is, I was thinking this case may actually be difficult, I'd get smacked in the face with fool-proof testimonies and tons of incriminating evidence... all I got was him being a jerk and objection-ing to everything along with being a jerk to the judge. Way to ruin a potentially great villain...

As for a game... I dunno, I felt very... lackluster about playing Worms. Okay, it wasn't really hyped up, but when I saw it in a gamestore, a collection of them for the 360, I bought it. I remembered having fun playing that when I was younger and played it with my husband. It was... not how I remembered worms... I sold it a few days ago because I needed money and wasn't playing it for a long time.

C-A

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Is it really that bad? If so, care to elaborate?

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Recently? Probably Dual Destinies. I've said multiple times that the final case is the worst in the entire series and I stand by that.

Back when the world was young? Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. Holy crap, talk about butchering your own lore. I mean invading Outland and killing Illidan and seeing Kael'thas joining the Burning Legion is one thing but holy frigg on a stick the ending of Wrath of the Lich King and all of Cataclysm hurt the Warcraft lore so bad one would think it was sabotage.

Skyrim was also a disappointment to me; it's a great game, I can see that, and there's enjoyment to be had, but the stories are done poorly, and they hyped it so much. There was also a significant lack of good spells, as if they were RELYING on mods.

Heart of the Swarm: more like Kerrigan steamrolls the universe in an angsty rage accompanied by arguably the worst dialogue I've ever seen in major title.

Before time and space came to be? Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lord - it's an odd one, considering the game is superb for the most part, but the downright unfinished ending (try as you might, if you don't install a fan-made patch which is not perfect by any means, you will wonder what the hell is going on and ask yourself 'was that it?') and the boring characters save for my favorite villain of all time and HK-47 simply ruins the game for me. We get it, light and dark are subjective, you're just repeating what Kreia is saying only you're much less interesting.

However, the biggest insult of all is without a doubt Dragon Age II. I made a long post about this a while ago, so I'll keep it short this time: Dragon Age: Origins remains one of the best games I've ever played. The music, characters, branching story, combat depth and overall story is superb, and Dragon Age II does nothing of that right, opting instead to become a button masher. There's a reason even EA is letting Dragon Age: Inquisition, the upcoming title, take its sweet time; Dragon Age II was a rushed, broken mess of a game that very few liked, and considering EA staff was caught trying to praise it anonymously, they're hesitant to breathe down the developers' necks like they normally do.

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Please. My objectively 100% correct opinion is objectively 100% correct. That should be clear.


If you insist...

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That does seem strange. I mean, they built up the Jury System big time in AJ. And then it just... isn't there in DD, right? Do they ever even mention why it's gone or is it... just plain dropped?

C-A

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Thousand Year Door is one of my favorite games of all time. In fact, it's the first game I've ever played. This isn't me being nostalgia-blind. It still holds up incredibly well and all the friends I've introduced it to love it. I consider it to be the absolute perfect game to introduce someone to the world of video games in general. It's fun, you have to be smart while playing, skill is required, it's charming, it's funny, and it's actually emotional. It's not just great actually; it's probably the only game that I'd call perfect

Super Paper Mario is eh. It's hilarious and has a great story, but getting rid of the RPG elements just made the game kind of boring. The music is still top-notch, though, just like TTYD

If you have time. This is the best review I've seen of the game (though his score doesn't reflect the review): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DiQ7h8E ... ef8mKuxwrw

Basically, the game feels like a regular Mario platformer with RPG elements. There's NO story (well there is, but it's just rescuing Peach, unlike the story of the other games). Each game had a different world that you traversed through. Each world had its own independent story that was separate from the larger one. Some of them got pretty tragic and some were just fun. TTYD and Super Paper Mario in particular had a lot of heart put into it. Once you solved the problems of a world, you could even travel back and just visit this separate hub

Sticker Star is lifeless. Each world has nothing to offer. They're all the same level with a different backdrop.

Also, one of the core elements of the series were the partners. The partners added a lot of strategy, great characters, and some life to the game. Sticker Star had no partners. You just hang out with Kersti who is so bland and doesn't really do much

Also, the battle system sucks. There are so many stickers and you're going to want to save your stickers for harder fights, so you'll spend every battle using a normal jump or normal hammer. On boss fights, there's a specific strategy to beating each one which won't be told to you until you're near death, so you're guaranteed to die at least once, unless you play a guessing game and get really lucky. Also, running away from a battle has no punishment. In other games, coins would fly away from you and disappear quickly. If you stayed behind to collect them, the enemy could tag you again. In this, the enemy disappears like you defeated it anyway. You'll run away a lot because of this. Why waste your stickers?

Plus, there's no reward to a battle besides coins, which build up quick. It's a game with an RPG battling system but no experience? Why bother battling, then?

And like kwando said, the enemies are not creative at all. The bosses in the other games were so creative (Doopliss, Crump, etc) but these are basically like, "A BIG Goomba. That's good enough!" Also, Bowser is the main antagonist again. He was in the first game, but the series moved on from it. Even so, he was always the comic relief and completely hilarious. In Sticker Star, he has no dialogue

There are serious mind-boggling design flaws in this game. The creator got EVERYTHING wrong. It's like they didn't realize what made the original series so great (also, the music is forgettable). The only thing that's better about this game is the graphics. They were pretty creative with making the world "paper-y"

Aw. I thought you were joking in your op about hating Dangan Ronpa. I haven't read the inside of this tag, but now I'm sad because I was planning on playing it this weekend. I've been looking for a good Ace Attorney/Mystery Game substitute for ages

Is it at least worth trying out?

Hey! You mentioned Athena tw-twice! O-oh...ooooohhhh.....


It's dropped. There's a fan theory that the Dark Age of the Law made it so people couldn't trust the courts so the Jury System got dropped, but it's never mentioned in the game. And like BP said, the Dark Age of the Law is really poorly handled

I think Phoenix just realized the only way he could beat Kristoph was to cheat. The bloody ace and the jurist system

Just plain dropped. As is the Gramarye plot thread.


If you go in with rock bottom expectations for the mysteries, I guess it could be worth seeing what all the hullabaloo is about? Fyi, there aren't any really major spoilers in my DR tag.

Also, one more thing I wanted to say in my DR rant that I forgot to mention

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It's definitely worth trying it out. I guarantee that you will enjoy the game alot.

Well that's stupid. Not just in terms of contuinuity, but game design. I know they were made to focus the game on having the Jury System look good, since it was being re-instated in Japan. But they can't just drop something that is so important in one game and then not have it in the next, with no explanation. That's just bad game design. The least they could've done, maybe, is have the DLC Case where Phoenix re-obtains his badge be with a jury system. I've said it before, but how I thought of making the jury system a game mechanic was pretty cool. And it would've worked.

I can't say I was very disappointed with the game, but Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light. I got it because it seemed like an okay game. When I started playing it, it was about as cliché and predictable as any other RPG, but as I continued, I realized that it was a mediocre game made worse with its stupid controls and lack of - but then too much of - a story.

C-A

PS: There was a Gramarye Plot Thread?

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Well, there was still the whole Apollo/Trucy (and Thalassa) thing, but that gets absolutely no mention.

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Guided Fate Paradox, the story is unbearable but the so called gameplay had alot of potential. Sadly you never really get to witness what it could be because they keep hinting on stages like for example Digimon World 2003 being in the other world, but you can only access some flat board lame stages... I can't even explain it but I guess it's the worst case of "show not tell" or so.

...who cares? Considering the game seems to somehow hint that Trucy may have known immediately that her father was killed, maybe she figured the Apollo/Thalassa thing out and just didn't mention it. As for Thalassa... she's a bitch for not saying anything.

C-A

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Er...a good bit of the fanbase care. That's why they wanted to see more in AA5. That's why we're even discussing the issue.

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Do you have any idea how disappointed i was in Pokemon mystery dungeon gates to infinity? Sure it's hard to make a game that was such a masterpiece as explorers of sky, but everything feels, im not sure how to describe it but i just don't like it.

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Isn't technically the "official" answer to this question E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600? Both games were MASSIVELY hyped back then, so much that Atari manufactured more cartridges then there were actual sold Atari 2600 systems. If both games were big contributors to the Video Game Crash of 1983 and were so bad that they were buried in the New Mexican desert, in my opinion, that automatically makes them the most disappointing games of all time. There's been tons of horrible games, games that are way worse than these two. Yet you'd be hard pressed to find another bad game that almost destroyed the entire industry.

Disappointment is highly subjective, so there's no such thing as an "official" answer. I, for one, was not affected by the E.T game, and can as such not call it a personal disappointment, just like I can't be disappointed by the decline of Final Fantasy, although I do share the fans' pain.

Dragon Age II, however, is the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, and it's an abomination that simply should not exist - that's disappointment for you.

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You're right about Dragon Age. Dragon Age II had some merits (love you Merrill) but it was so amazingly flawed. The combat was simplified, the areas REPEATED themselves all the time, the conflict and area was much smaller, you couldn't properly equip your allies like in Dragon Age Origins and possibly most annoying of all they adopted Bioware's beloved 'Wheel of Personality' so now your character too can have only 3 sides to them.

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Aye, while those are indeed major flaws, I think the story is the biggest insult. It basically starts three separate arcs and then leave them all more or less unresolved. The sad part is that they all have potential, but that potential is wasted with the boring dialogue, characters, action and just general pointlessness of the non-existent main story.

You're essentially Kirkwall's janitor, doing random shit for douchebags even though you have no reason to. Hell, you fled Ferelden and then wanted to climb up the social ladder - which you accomplish by the first arc - and then there are two more completely unrelated arcs to go? What the hell?

If I can kill the Dragon Age II party in Inquistion (assuming I buy it), then I will. It's amazing how all of like 20 minutes of camp dialogue is more interesting and better written than absolutely anything and everything your companions in Dragon Age II say during the entirety of the game. It's a joke.

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Yeah, the story is kind of lacking and disconnected because they opted to go with "arcs" rather bizarrely. Some of them I felt didn't even really feel worth much merit. Act 1 is just Go on an Adventure and Get Rich. It leaves everything small in scale, the final conflict almost comes out of nowhere by comparison and a great part of the game just feels like...well just another day. It's like if Harvest Moon was an Action RPG you just get up, kill some problems and some plot shows up.

There's no overarching quest or motivation and it's just bothersome. I also hated how there was never a reasonable way to resolve things.

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I don't really think we need to tag our comments since no one should play this game unless they want to laugh at some bad dialogue and be frustrated at the lack of choices in a bloody Bioware RPG. They TRY to make some look important, but it's basically "sacrifice random stranger to gain worthless gold" or "save random stranger and get nothing". The worst offenders are, of course, the now rather infamous final bosses.

Compare that to Dragon Age: Origins where you could practically kill everyone you could recruit, recruit them, piss them off and then use violence to ensure their obedience or become best friends with them and so on. Then there's the fact that your class, race and sex changes entire dialogues and ending options, whereas in nothing of the sort matters in Dragon Age II, even though being a mage is much more of a taboo in Kirkwall than in Ferelden (seriously, Hawke can run around using blood magic without any sort of repercussion! Even in Dragon Age: Origins they planned on having a scene where Irving and Wynne try to stop a bloody GREY WARDEN from using Blood Magic with multiple different ways to affect the outcome, and it can apparently still be accessed with mods.)



This game should seriously have been called "Dragon Age: Intermission" or "Dragon Age: Thumbkiller".

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I don't think any game comes close to Max Payne 3.

- the game took NINE years to come out
- it took the setting and background of the first two games and flushed it down the toilet
- we went from a decently written MP1 and an excellently written MP2 to a cringe worthy plot in MP3 that made zero sense and wasn't developed or planned in the slightest (plot points or characters are dropped off or killed off all the time for no purpose, without having contributed anything)
- pacing was butchered by constant useless conversations
- atmosphere was terrible
- no memorable moment whatsoever in the game


Thankfully, it came out at a time where I was jaded by the contemporary state of the VG and knew to not expect any remotely decent writing from rockstar, so the mourning wasn't too brutal.

FF13 1-3. End of Discussion.

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I challenge your discussion unless you have played all three games and can give me good reasons why you think they are terrible.

C-A

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Bad games, but only the first is worth the title 'most disappointing' The first one really lowered my standards for the second, the second was bad so I didn't buy the third.

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Mass Effect 3 probably.
From the laughably and poorly written introduction sequence that tries to force tugging at your heartstrings by killing a child and introducing melodrama even ME1 couldn't beat -- all the way to the shitty ending everyone were talking about two years ago. It was not just a disappointment, it was an awful Mass Effect game through and through, at least to me, but on its own right I can't say it was objectively bad. But coming from ME1 and ME2 with sky-high expectations I was so let down by the mere first 10 minutes of it that I ended up going through the rest of the game with an odd and uncomfortable tummy-ache. I can admit it had some of the most emotionally gripping moments in the trilogy, but they were FAR outweighed by the bad writing that dominated the bigger parts of the story.

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I'm still waiting for Anthony to list some reasons that are not "I read how people hate it, so I agree" without playing them. (You may say I do the same with KH, but difference is that I came up with the opinion that it isn't great on my own, simply by watching gameplay and similar and not listening to other people's thoughts on it) You have given your reasons and, some I agree with about XIII-2 and others are don't. *shrug*

Have yet to find a disappointing game again... well...
Okay, I'm not saying the game is disappointing, but aspects of it. The Full Voice Edition of Tales of Phantasia, for the PSP. Now, I'm glad, I like Kusao voicing Cless, I like Mika Kanai giving me a cute Arche and all. But some aspects of the game just... don't quite work for me. The lack of subtitles for skits bothers me a bit, cause I have to put the volume higher to hear them talking. The battle system is still a bit slow.
And I'm sure this is my fault, but I can't seem to move the party members behind me when I'm ambushed...
I know it's technically a voiced port of the PS1 version, but still.

C-A

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Pierre echoed my thoughts about Dark Dawn, and while I was hugely disappointed in Sticker Star, I don't think it was bad. It was just very, very bland and empty. Just felt like the heart and soul of the series was taken out and we were left with nothing but the bones.

Some games I can think of off the top of my head that no one has mentioned here yet.

Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time.
I LOVED the first game, it was so brilliantly done. Had fun game play, great dialogue, and I loved the interactive battles. This game, expanded on all of that, but in the wrong direction. I hated the idea of controlling 4 people at once, the villains were lackluster, and while the funny dialogue was still there, it just felt like something was missing. I didn't like how the world wasn't connected from area to area like the first game either. The gimmicks weren't fun and I found the soundtrack mostly forgettable save for a few tracks. I don't think it's bad as a game, but I didn't like it.

Zelda DS games.
I was so VERY excited to play Zelda on my DS when I first heard about them. Then I got them. Touch controls were off-putting enough. I like touch controls enough, but keep them out of games where the whole game is action based. Don't even get me started on having to scream or play instruments in the mike.

Diddy Kong Racing DS
This game was one of my favorites on the N64, so of course I had to get it for the DS. Promised new tracks, different characters to try. I can chalk it up to nostalgia for missing Taj's and T.T.'s old voice, but the one thing that legitimately put me off the game was starting each race. Requiring touch controls or blowing to get the boost instead of a simple button. While an interesting concept, if the whole game is going to require button input, don't do it for this one thing. It always throws off my boost and I end up getting a bad start anyways.

Persona 3 FES
After coming off of Persona 4, I opted to go out and buy this game. Compared to Persona 4, the characters were lackluster, the AI wasn't really reliable, the story was VERY weak, and the game felt dragged. Honestly, as much as I love dungeon crawling, Tartarus wasn't interesting. There was so much dead space during the game, I ended up getting to level 99 early because I had nothing better to do. The music wasn't THAT great either, but there were a few soundtracks that ended up being fantastic. It at least still has a pretty amazing final boss theme.

I'll also include here a lot of NES games I rented as a kid that didn't end up being fun as their box cover advertised.

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For me (regarding games I have played) it would have to be Civ 5 and A Link Between World. Civ 5 for it's lack of creativity and just blandness (but dem graphics doh!) and LBW for the fact that I payed $40 for a game that did not last me a week. Gary's mod was dirt cheap and it has lasted longer then that game ever could. Same for Lego Marvel Superheros, Sanctum 2, Minecraft and all the Ace Attorney games combined.

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