So desired but very disappointing game that you have ever played?

Guys,

What was the most desired game that you eagerly wanted to play but became a great disappointment later? What was the most annoying thing about it?

What made you to dislike it: the short or dull story, the inability to be played even on the most advanced hardware, the poor graphic or something else?

For me it was the Rebel Assault because the game featured groundbreaking full motion video sequences, but played poorly on even the most advanced hardware, with blocky, pixelated images and jumpy frame rates, short and relatively dull story and etc.

Please comment.

Mass effect 3... that is all.

Master of Orion 3, such a let down after MoO2. Playing it felt like I was a bureaucratic government employee, and since I already had a job in RL my time with the game was pretty short. Gah.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Mass effect 3... that is all.

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Only the last 10 minutes though. The dozens of hours I put into it before the ending were fantastic.

Fable 3, it destroyed the Fable franchise by removing everything that was good from Fable 2 and 1 then replacing it with a huge steaming turd. The horrendous menu-system and 101 dlcs made it worse, purposefully cutting included content just to sell it at an overcharged price.

Some of the more 'revolutionary mechanics' were as revolutionary as finding a 5 year old scribbling over a picture. You would slaughter 100 Balverines and the stat upgrade you would get your 'personalised weapon' with "you swam 0.8 meters!", stats and text being absolutely terrible and not reflecting your character in the slightest.

In recent experience, I found Rome 2 very disappointing. I've moved from the CA pre-order camp to the I won't buy another game from them until it's at least a year old and on sale. CA is dead to me at this point.

And as I've said before, I'm really fine with that, I've got MTW2 Stainless Steel, the soon to be released EB2, and my all time favorite Shogun 2 to play to my hearts content, they could honestly never make another game and I'd be fine with that.

Thief: Deadly Shadows. What a turd did that turn out to be. Huge fan of the first two, absolutily hated the third. Small levels, poor AI, horrible physic, no rope arrow wtf, in general uninspired. The awesomness of the Cradle didn't save it from being a step back in just about everything. Bioshock was also a huge dissapointment but that is probably due to me expecting a spiritual succesor of the System-Shock series. Not a bad game, just not what I hoped it would be.

rome 2.

probably some more, but rome2 is the most recent.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Only the last 10 minutes though. The dozens of hours I put into it before the ending were fantastic.

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Oh, what happened in the last 10 minutes?

They really messed up the ending. Basically the ending was hyped up to be reliant on the culmination of all your choices in all the three games, but in the end they just have you three bland options that seemingly resulted in basically the same things, very similar ending cutscenes that just left a very bad taste in everyone's mouths.

Rumor has it that instead of a panel of writers working on the ending, it was just the head writer and he refused any input about his ending. Don't know if it's true but it would explain things.

There actually is a mod that replaces the ending with something a lot better, it's called the Happy Endings mod and I was fortunate enough to not have quite such a bitter taste in my mouth with the modded ending.

All in all though the trilogy is overall amazing and by far some of the best storytelling in a game I have ever seen.

That ending is a significant improvement.

Every TW game since MTW.

The most recent? Rome 2.

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Originally Posted by easytarget

In recent experience, I found Rome 2 very disappointing. I've moved from the CA pre-order camp to the I won't buy another game from them until it's at least a year old and on sale.

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This pretty much.

Mass Effect 3 was kind of so-so but they didn't botch that entirely imo. I didn't have the misfortune of playing it with the original ending though.

Dead Space 3? I'm not the kind of person who likes playing survival horror games, so the first game of the series was sufficiently scary for me, which I enjoyed. The second game was even better, which was... even better. The third one was really bleh and action shootery and kind of a disappointment.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

They really messed up the ending. Basically the ending was hyped up to be reliant on the culmination of all your choices in all the three games, but in the end they just have you three bland options that seemingly resulted in basically the same things, very similar ending cutscenes that just left a very bad taste in everyone's mouths.

Rumor has it that instead of a panel of writers working on the ending, it was just the head writer and he refused any input about his ending. Don't know if it's true but it would explain things.

There actually is a mod that replaces the ending with something a lot better, it's called the Happy Endings mod and I was fortunate enough to not have quite such a bitter taste in my mouth with the modded ending.

All in all though the trilogy is overall amazing and by far some of the best storytelling in a game I have ever seen.

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I see. Thanks for sharing it with me. I will check the game as you like it so much.

Dragon Age 2, Rome 2 ,Mass Effect 3 in that order

Dragon Age 2 was utterly terrible and it looks like they have recognised their mistakes... I am still not preordering Inquisition however...

Rome 2 doesn't deserve to be called a Total War game and was terrible glitchy and flawed

Mass Effect 3 was a disappointment but not to the level of the other 2 - it was a reasonable game it was just the ending that brought it down - the whole series had been about making decisions which impact the whole game and then they throw 3 generic options at you and wrap it up...

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Originally Posted by Sir Moody

Rome 2 doesn't deserve to be called a Total War game and was terrible glitchy and flawed

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After 14 patches I very much disagree with that statement. Maybe it wasnt upon release, but now certainly.

A game that takes 14 major patches to bring it to a standing that can be considered playable isnt a good game. A game that even when you are winning you aren't having fun is not a good game.

Rome2, CoH2, starbound, X Rebirth all were major letdowns for me.

Rome2 was a farce on release and it killed me. I wanted that game to succeed in the way that shogun2 did for me. It just fell on its face.

CoH2 was just a reskin of DoW2:40k and the mechanics fell so far from what CoH1 brought to the table.

Starbound just didn't do it for me. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I enjoyed Terraria so much and I thought it might have been like that but in the end I was disappointed.

X-Rebirth just fell flat on its face for me. It was like they tried to turn a space sim into a combat sim and I was severely disappointed in it.

I definitely agree that the release of R2 was a total and utter flop, but in my opinion one must judge a game on its current state, and in its current state I would say it is on par with the rest of the TW series. The release, on the other hand, was just as bad as ETW's release, which I recall being just as bad. Though I would say now that R2 is on a higher level than ETW is.

Maybe its the optimist in me, but I see 14 patches not only as a failure of its release state, but also as a reassurance from CA that while they might have released a faulty product, they really are committed to fixing their mistakes. And for all we know, the release date might not have been in CA's control...

Oh, what we would have given to get more than one or two patches in the earlier TW games.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

After 14 patches I very much disagree with that statement. Maybe it wasnt upon release, but now certainly.

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rofl... 14 patches

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Oh, what we would have given to get more than one or two patches in the earlier TW games.

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:yes: We were lucky to get VI 2.01, and a few more would have been nice, especially for newer hardware/Windows releases. STW/MTW are essentially dead now.

14 patches just to be playable is a bit of a disgrace, but long term support is something you just don't get much of these days. The final Quake 3 version was v1.32, that got constant updates over several years, and Neverwinter Nights went to v1.69(?) over it's lifetime.

Black & White

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Black & White

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I actually liked that, but I wasn't hyped up with it, but it fits into the Lionhead trend of overstating itself.

I remember your 'avatar' and tower synched online, and people used to troll 'good' gods by throwing civilians at their tower, turning them to pure evil.

Age of Wonders 3.

Had high expectations for it, bought it the week it came out, clocked 7 hours of gameplay, then realized that I was getting bored to tears. The game is stable, the graphics are very good, music is incredible, bugs nowhere to be seen, yet it failed to interest me. Maybe 10 years is too long of a wait for a straight up clone/sequel that doesn't introduce anything radical.

Maybe that's why the new X-Com game is so good: it's not a clone in any way, shape or form.

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Originally Posted by drone

14 patches just to be playable is a bit of a disgrace, but long term support is something you just don't get much of these days. The final Quake 3 version was v1.32, that got constant updates over several years, and Neverwinter Nights went to v1.69(?) over it's lifetime.

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Most of the serious bugs were ironed out after patch 3 or 4 I would say. The rest of them were minor bug fixes and balancing. Patch 14 finally brought the siege AI up to par, but it was "playable" way before that.

i didnt want a playable game, i wanted the most epic TW untill now. thats how the advertised it, and they delivered the most epic turd of the ages. i knew i shouldve paid more attention during advertisement classes, but somehow, this seems familiar.

on a more serious note, for me it wasnt just that the game was buggy, unstable and unfinished, but i overall dont like the path they have taken for the last few tw games in a row now and which has really been taken to the next level in this game. all this streamlined and dumbed down bs... ugh. but the major kill blow was the speed of the battles, i just couldnt enjoy the game that way, a battle between 4k troops on each side should be a major slugfest or a tactical game of chess between two commanders. not a protoss vs terran rofl stomp thats over in 2 minutes... really i swear i clocked it, 4k vs 4k, over in 6 min, 2k troops dead on each side. wtf is that? maybe that changed, maybe u can get mods, i dont care anymore. i wasted 40 bux, i pick up my losses, and it will be the last tw game i ever bought.

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

...but the major kill blow was the speed of the battles, i just couldnt enjoy the game that way, a battle between 4k troops on each side should be a major slugfest or a tactical game of chess between two commanders. not a protoss vs terran rofl stomp thats over in 2 minutes...

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Funny, that sounds like my thoughts on one of my biggest disappointments - Rome Total War. I guess I wouldn't like Son of RTW either. :shrug:

Further to that. In MTW it felt like tactics made a difference (likely in STW too); everything since is like two drunks brawling-sure one is going to fall, overall its over fast, it ain't pretty and god only knows what happened.

I agree. However, I recently got M2TW and played it for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised at how long combat lasted. You could actually maneuver after the fighting started. So unlike RTW.

Whatever the sequel to Deus Ex was called, loved the first game to pieces...

The total war series (just the MP really) after VI. Actually enjoyed the single player more in the later games (but rarely bother with battles) ETW is probably my favourite for SP but everything starts grinding to a standstill when I get too far in, had some good Polish games I had to abandon.

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Originally Posted by LittleGrizzly

Whatever the sequel to Deus Ex was called, loved the first game to pieces...

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Actually liked it.

Also agree with everybody who hates the fast pace of battles post MTW releases, MTW remains my favorite and I still play it.

Wasn't necessarily a terrible game by itself... with it being the sequel to probably my favourite ever SP game I was left very disappointed though. Probably much like the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films, they are actually entertaining but after the first one I was disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

I agree. However, I recently got M2TW and played it for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised at how long combat lasted. You could actually maneuver after the fighting started. So unlike RTW.

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i generally remember RTW as RTW:EB so that may be why i remember RTW1 more fondly. But even in the original RTW i dont remember fights being over that fast, and i know i had fights where i had to manoeuver and hold my ground and even fought off 20k troops in multiple clashes with 1 stack. that was so epic :P

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Originally Posted by LittleGrizzly

Wasn't necessarily a terrible game by itself... with it being the sequel to probably my favourite ever SP game I was left very disappointed though. Probably much like the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films, they are actually entertaining but after the first one I was disappointed.

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Didn't like it at first either, but it's hilarious to break the game and see what happens. You can have a lot of fun with doing stupid things. But the storytelling is of course not as good as in the first, Maggie Chows appartment was tense as :daisy: ' one of the many wtf moments in genuine storytelling

What I didn't like about the tactical battles is that half the time the units have a mind of their own. You would say "Attack the 3rd column!" then they do a 90 degree turn and attack the first, whilst the 3rd flanks them in the rear and you are sat there thinking "Why-o-why are you doing this to me.."

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Most of the serious bugs were ironed out after patch 3 or 4 I would say. The rest of them were minor bug fixes and balancing. Patch 14 finally brought the siege AI up to par, but it was "playable" way before that.

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You mean it took them a year to add a working siege AI? ^^

• Bioshock: Infinite. I loved the original as well as the sequel. A utopean world that went down into ruin and you are supposed to make something of that. Early demo's showed us Columbia would be similar, but somewhere along the way the developers decided to make it into a overreligious, patriotic place that was basically living in the past. The story didn't make it any better.
• Rome II. I was really looking forward to this one. CA stated the game would be very historically accurate(or something along those lines anyway), but I didn't see anything of that. The AI barely did anything in my short playthroughs, there was little variety in units in my opinion, battles were over too quick and I just couldn't make sense of them. The family system seemed to have no purpose at all. This may be due to me playing less popular factions(Macedonia, Pontus), but it was no fun for me.
• Company of Heroes 2. I love CoH1. It's mechanics allows players who had been dealt huge blows in the early game to bounce back if they managed to play flawlessly from then on. CoH2? Not so much. The designers decided to remove all the little elements that made the game so fun in the first place.
• Brink. This game I had been looking forward to from 2009 on. It was supposed to be a objective-based FPS with lots of customisation: you could and can still customize your character and weapons. The major mechanic that made it stand out was free-running. However, the released game had lots of bugs, bad multiplayer networking and free-running didn't work well.

Interesting choice on Bioshock Infinite, this is the only one in the series I found interesting. I found the others tiresome, over rated and the philosophical under pinning of Ayn Rand sophomoric (but then you can't really rise above the source material, and Rand is a moron).

I think you may have missed a great deal of what was going on in the story of Infinite. The gameplay is just meh (true of all of them), but the story and ideas embedded are quite possibly some of the deepest "take the red pill" ideas in any game I've ever played.

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/37

Bravo Stranger.

Speaking of Mass Effect 3, Kasey "Red Green or blue equals diverse" Hudson has left bioware.

I wish this made me as happy as I feel I should be to see the back of him.

Still, it increases my hopes for Dragon Age 3.

Hate to break it to you, but bioware stopped being bioware a long time ago, even before the dear ole Docs sold out to EA.

I don't know what exactly to call ME or DAO, but I do know what not to call them, RPGs.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Speaking of Mass Effect 3, Kasey "Red Green or blue equals diverse" Hudson has left bioware.

I wish this made me as happy as I feel I should be to see the back of him.

Still, it increases my hopes for Dragon Age 3.

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It also raises my hope for the new Mass Effect game that we still know almost nothing about.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

I'd say NWN was the last real effort by the true Bioware. It was only a cult hit at best though, and NWN2 was a hugely expensive and forgotten flop. That's what forced them to sell out, I think.

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...I really liked NWN2...

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

...I really liked NWN2...

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As did I, but the game play experience was horrible - the UI, camera control/angles really sucked the fun out of it. I nearly stopped playing it after a few sessions due to frustration.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

DAO was an RPG by any standard.

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Maybe I suppose, but to me it's the definition of brain dead on a rail. Being lead around by the nose.

If that's RPG, it's the short bus version imho. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

...I really liked NWN2...

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Same here, I enjoyed it a lot, in fact a great deal more than everything coming out at the time, and certainly more than anything that has come out since that is so dumbed down it makes my head hurt. Which naturally is why I've enjoyed Divinity: Original Sin so much.

I will concede the point made by Cube that even at this stage for bioware the signs of the wheels coming off were already evident in the game design decisions made between NWN1 and NWN2. It was as if the game development had been handed over to someone who had never played DND live, failed to see what the central point of NWN1 was and then had at it anyway, couple that with the first signs of DLC (which as I recall they may have instead called modules or something) which was the also the antithesis of player made core of the NWN1 and you in hindsight can see what was looming on the not too distant horizon.

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

rofl... 14 patches

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Well, they released the public beta for Rome 2 in September 2013. Now, in August 2014, they updated the AI to be somewhat competent at sieges, which, despite CA's best efforts to make it not so (according to their own advertising anyways), is the situation in which you load up/have to load up the battle map the most.

It looks to me like Rome 2 was released about 6-8 months ahead of time and all the patching and community service we got in the beginning was just CA finishing off things they already were working on when the 'game' was released.

So yeah, buy the next TW game a year after release. It should be somewhat completed then.

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Originally Posted by Sp4

So yeah, buy the next TW game a year after release. It should be somewhat completed then.

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Everyone can't do that. Some poor individuals have to step up with their money and take one for the team. If Next Total War flops and goes to the bargain bin a month after release due to horrible sales, CA isn't going to waste their time on multiple patches to fix the game.

No argument there GC. I'd rather a game release be delayed to get it right than rushed out the door broken. But my point is that a game developer isn't going to issue 14 patches for a game that isn't successful.

I never saw this coming: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014...s/#more-227139

1776

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

1776

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Nah, the ones that disappointed me were usually anything by SPI. No matter the subject matter, when you got the game it just was not fun to play.

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Originally Posted by rickinator9

• Company of Heroes 2. I love CoH1. It's mechanics allows players who had been dealt huge blows in the early game to bounce back if they managed to play flawlessly from then on. CoH2? Not so much. The designers decided to remove all the little elements that made the game so fun in the first place.

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Give CoH2 another chance. Mechanically, it's actually the other way around - the way that Coh2 does resource income, upkeep, and pop cap actually means that come backs are far more feasible than in CoH1.

Heres your CoH2 comback. 100 Popcap, you build KT and spam sturmpioneers and laugh as everything dies before you. Any other faction is S.O.L.

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Originally Posted by Fisherking

Nah, the ones that disappointed me were usually anything by SPI. No matter the subject matter, when you got the game it just was not fun to play.

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Their Korea game was pretty good. But in general I agree with you, the SPI stuff always bogged down.

Speaking of SPI, I saw a copy of Strategy & Tactics magazine in a store a couple of weeks ago. My jaw hit the floor as I thought S&T went the way of the dinosaur 2-3 decades ago.

Never played an SPI game, but their rep for making "monster" games intrigued me for years.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Speaking of SPI, I saw a copy of Strategy & Tactics magazine in a store a couple of weeks ago. My jaw hit the floor as I thought S&T went the way of the dinosaur 2-3 decades ago.

Never played an SPI game, but their rep for making "monster" games intrigued me for years.

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They had some interesting ideas, but some of their games were so complex in practice that going through basic would've been less of a burden.

The Mag

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Originally Posted by Veho Nex

Heres your CoH2 comback. 100 Popcap, you build KT and spam sturmpioneers and laugh as everything dies before you. Any other faction is S.O.L.

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Are you talking about 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3 and 4v4? On 3v3 and 4v4, you're probably right. They don't bother to balance the game for larger team games - sad, but that's how it is. I wish they'd rethink that.

As for 1v1 and 2v2:

OKW has a strong late game, sure, but a King Tiger costs around 250 fuel, and requires you to fully tech out everything, on a faction with a 2/3 fuel penalty. Sturmpios costs 320 MP. If they have a King Tiger and are spamming sturmpios, you really have not been pressuring them that whole time at all, despite allies having an early-mid game advantage.

Also, even end game, the same amount of fuel and MP invested in Jacksons and riflemen can wreck a KT and sturm pios.

Empire Total War.

I was a bit young to really appreciate STW and MTW, but as a n00b I loved RTW, and as I matured I came to really appreciate what the mods offered. Looking back, RTW wasn't great, but its game engine had the potential to create something truly phenomenal - things like EB which have given me endless gaming joy.

M2TW was a very solid game, and Kingdoms was IMO the best expansion for a TW game to date. Of course it took modding to get it they way I really like it, but the base game was IMO a fair bit better than RTW - battles were longer and thus more tactical, graphics were significantly improved, more variety in terms of agents etc - all in all it felt a bit deeper than its predecesor.

And then came ETW - this title came for me to represent the death of the TW series. Somehow it just didn't feel like TW, it wasn't enjoyable. The game didn't play smoothly with all the different maps. And yet despite having a more global scope, somehow the factions all seemed kind of generic. The game didn't have much of an atmosphere to it. Things like forts didn't work at all. Naval battles were gimmicky and lacked the complexity of land battles. It just wasn't up to much.

I skipped NTW, but I did try S2TW. S2TW for me was OK - it had a good character to it, but battles were over far too quickly and there was no tactical element to them. I would say the campaign and the feel of the game was enjoyable, but battles were a let down.

As for R2TW, I didn't buy it, but played it a little on my brothers PC, and it felt like a mess. My brother said it is rubbish and I should stick to EB. So I did.

I love ETW more than any other in the series -- admittedly Darth Modded. I would agree that sea battles are still a little too "arcade," but all-in-all I love the game and its scope.