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How many times has your pre-release hype been met or exceeded by a game at launch?

TrueLegend

Member
Expectations have been met several times like DMC5.
But exceeded only once for me.....by God of War III. Literal jaw-dropping.Total Holy Shit Moment. The trailer to that game at that time looked better than Demon's Souls. But on release, they just crushed it, and not just in visuals but the audio was also on the next level.
 

Con-Z-epT

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
I'm very informed about any game i want to buy on release day so i always have my expectations in check which leeds to a game that meets my hype or exeeds it.

Sometimes on the long way to release it seems that my hype wasn't justified by all the things i got to know about a game and i might not buy it.

Either way i can't think of any game from the past 5-10 years where i tought the game was a let down in corelation to my expectations.
 

iHaunter

Member
How often has your hype been met?
Drop some examples if you can

At launch because developers seem to think they can release something 80% of the way to their vision and then patch the game into perfection.
And I guess they can, really.
Pretty much any Sony 1st party game. WoW on launch. Uhh. FFXIV was pretty amazing on launch for me as well.

Don't recall many 3rd party games for consoles. Maybe Oblivion? Was pretty buggy though.
 

Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
Paramount Network No GIF by Yellowstone
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I was crazy hyped for Spies vs Mercs back in the day. I remember reading the same 8 page feature in some PSX magazine over and over again. Then it came out and became one of my favorite games of all time.

Then in 2017 I looked at Fortnite like a "I'll try that until PUBG releases on consoles" and it hooked me immediately. Now probably my favorite game of all time.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
How often has your hype been met?
Drop some examples if you can

At launch because developers seem to think they can release something 80% of the way to their vision and then patch the game into perfection.
And I guess they can, really.
Astro’s Play Room, ICO, SotC, TLG, Shenmue I&II, etc…
 
How often has your hype been met?
Drop some examples if you can

At launch because developers seem to think they can release something 80% of the way to their vision and then patch the game into perfection.
And I guess they can, really.
Met? Rarely, and it's sad
Way more often they are deluded, like Mgsv ( incredible gameplay, but the plot as a mgs fan...ew)

Pretty much every big name disappointed me, except for gamecube gen


Exceeded? Mmh, going with memory only, I can say re4 or, more recently, Digimon Story cyber sleuth, an incredible digimon game indeed

Oh and Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Pokémon ruby
 
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GametimeUK

Member
My hype for Uncharted 2 was off the charts and the game exceeded my expectations. I adored the first game.

Dark Souls is another game I was massively hyped for and also exceeded my expectations when it released.

It seems these days I don't really get hyped for games anymore. The feeling of excitement and anticipation for a game really isn't there for me. On a plus side it means most games exceed my expectations, but the bar is already set so low. I tend to avoid most pre release footage etc too whereas back in the day I'd be dying to know everything I could about a game before launch.

(Edit) on the flip side MGS4 is an example of the opposite happening. Unparalleled levels of hype getting to play as Solid Snake again, but I ended up hating the game after chapter 2.
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
Only once from what I can recall, with CoD4 - I was super hyped for the game because it was finally a modern day shooter which I craved so much after decade of nothing but either Vietnam/WWII or distant future/space settings, but I was looking forward only to the SP campaign as I was never a MP gamer, except for the good old UT99/Q3A lan parties, but then that create-a-class MP trailer dropped and I got interested into MP as well, and when the game finally shipped, oh boy, I literally got addicted for years, it was that good, this is the game that actually made me a 180 turn into a MP gamer for the next decade. I still haven't played a MP shooter that got so many (one would thing obvious) things right to this day, and most likely never will seeing how unfinished modern games are, how terribly designed the maps are, how unbalanced the games are, how many gimmicks there are instead of actual running and gunning, and so on.

Maybe The Ascent will join the club, because this game is on my radar since ever it was revealed last year, and each gameplay just keeps looking better and better. I will know in a week.
 
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Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
My gif reply was simply a joke. Bioshock exceeded my expectations and they were high at the time. Also the original Metal Gear Solid, I had the demo disc and the full thing was simply astonishing at the time when I got it.
 

01011001

Banned
Batman Arkham Asylum:

I had high hopes because it was Rocksteady and I previously loved their first game Urban Chaos: Riot Response. So I did have high hopes, but the final game absolutely blew me the fuck away... these guys went from underdog AA dev with some jank to extremely polished AAA game that blew every other UE3 game out of the water and was simply excellent.

______________

Halo 3:

I was not that much into Halo before Halo 3... I played 1 and 2 because friends had them, but I only ever borrowed Halo 1 and completed it once before Halo 3 came out.
Then pre release the trailers and just the whole zeitgeist at the time hyped me up like crazy (hats off to the PR team) and after getting it I was absolutely obsessed with it. me and my brother played through it so many times during the first weeks it was ridiculous. and we played splitscreen online MP basically all the time.

______________

Breath of the Wild:

It was the first new 3D Zelda in ages so that was hype enough, but it also was a drastically new direction for the 3D Zelda games... so the hype was big,
what came out of it in the end was one of the single best games ever made.

______________

Dark Souls 3:

I liked Dark Souls 1 but the second half was just a mess let's be honest. Dark Souls 2 was a mess from start to finish... but Dark Souls 3 promised the return of the A team at FromSoftware to the series so there was a lot of hype around that fact alone.
then it released and fucking blew my socks off.
I to this day would argue anyone that Dark Souls 3 is either the best video game ever made or at the very least it is among the top 3.
Everything is just so well designed it's ridiculous.
 
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TacosNSalsa

Member
DMC5, Bloodborne , Dark Souls 3 were games i was full immersed in the hype pool and they all passed my expectations to varing degrees . Resident Evil 8 I just slightly dipped my big toe into said hype pool but ended up enjoying it immensely
 

Spacefish

Member
Getting older and understanding the limitations of the medium made this almost impossible, games from the past 15 years have only managed to surprise me when I had low expectations. The one exception is BOTW, I enjoyed that game in a way I thought was impossible since I figured I had become too old and cynical.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Not for a long time. I haven't bought into hype since the start of the PS360 generation. The rough start the PS3 had with developers delivering worse versions on PS3 made me a bit misanthropic when it comes to new releases. Also the move to digital and the end of game scarcity at launch made me focus less on hype.

Several times on PS2, though. Jak & Daxter was much better than I expected. Shadow of the Colossus and GTA: San Andreas also delivered more than I expected.
 

Fare thee well

Neophyte
I'm satisfied, even with the average and some 'mediocre,' releases, because I always know what I'm signing up for. I have a very solid and rational-headed understanding of how games are made and the scope they were aiming for. Growing up in the 90s, you always had small B-level games (some of you call them AA games now), and even major studios were still small teams of devs. You would always run into design quirks and some distasteful decisions, but creativity and originality were far more pervasive. People praise a game like Fallout New Vegas today, but I think if today's climate existed back then, gamers would flip out at how shoddy the bugs and engine was. But there is so much to still enjoy with its flaws. And that's what it is today. People can't handle a flawed gem or idea.

Today people put way too much emphasis on hype, graphics, and streamers.
 

Poppincaps

Neo Member
I would say most games either meet or exceed my expectations. It's rare that a game actually disappoints me. I kinda assume that most games will be an 8/10 and most of the games I play meet that or are 9s or 10s.
 

DJTHEGREY

Member
Mass Effect
Zelda BoTW
TitanFall - A bonus I met one my best friends playing this

Kingdom Hearts
GTA 3
FF X
Oblivion
The Division
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
Games match my hype all the time, but very rarely exceed it. That being said I don't get ridiculously hyped and generally keep my expectations in check.
 

Fbh

Member
The last game that truly exceeded my expectations was probably FF7 Remake.
I was really skeptical about the game: Only Midgar, Nomura directing, real time combat, some troubled development with a dev studio change early on, FFXIII and XV sucked, etc.

The result was far from perfect but I still had an absolute blast playing through it. Loved the new combat, boss fights and visuals, music was fantastic too and I enjoyed the retelling of the plot aside from some Nomura bullshit towards the end.
 

AmuroChan

Member
It's a rare occasion, but it does happen occasionally to me where a game meets or exceeds expectations.

- Trails of Cold Steel IV
- Bloodborne
- God of War 2018
 

j0hnnix

Member
Gamepass always keeps me excited for pre-releases. With over 100+ games how can you not be hyped.

Sponsored by Colteastwood

Seriously. It's hard to get excited for pre-releases. These days

Always been more exited for hardware pre-release hype over software.

The one game I was excited for but cancelled pre-order after playing the Alpha was...

Anthem 🖕

The ones that delivered:

FF7(not Remake)
Yakuza 0
Yakuza 6 collectors
God of War 2018
Demon Souls Remake
Nioh
 

catvonpee

Member
I think the most I've ever been hyped for a game was TES: Oblivion and that combined with getting an Xbox 360 might have been the most hyped I have ever been.

I was pretty hyped for RDR2 and that lived up to the hype.
 

Bartski

Gold Member
it happens to me all the time, if the game is a 10/10 in my book no hype can compare to the enjoyment of the actual experience.
 

Vagswarm

Member
None that come to mind. I learned that what you (and the developers, probably) imagine it would be like in your head never matches the final product. And your imagination has no limits, unlike technology.

I stopped pre-ordering altogether and usually wait a while for things to settle down. A lot of games I pick up nowadays are due to positive, post-release word of mouth. This hasn't failed me yet.
 
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