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Most Dissappointing Games of 2013 (and explain why)

some of you guys should check out the calender before posting here.

and some of you guys posting MGRISING... you guys are kidding, right? that game is my GOTY with super mario 3d world.

disappointing games... havent played anything bad, but if i have to name something its persona 4.(iam from europe, it came out in feb/march)

and i think it looks underwhelming on a vita as well it has a strange filter and loading times.
FOR A HANDHELD GAME.

what is wrong with devs to have loading times in a handheld game!?! this is just plain aweful.

but beside the technical aspect, i love that game.
 
I would probably have to go with Ryse. I wasn't expecting that much, but it still managed to be a grueling experience equaled this year only by Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, of which I didn't expect any quality to begin with.

By the way, can we make a Most Surprising topic too? Life's too short for excess negativity.
 
Aliens CM is the only real answer here. Other games may have been disappointing, but only Colonial Mariens managed to have shit gameplay, shit graphics, a story that retroactively shits on the story of the film its based on, glitches, removed content, and a slimy ass PR prick like Randy Pitchford flat out lying to his customers about what the game contained.
Other games may have been disappointing, but Aliens CM was an actual insult to everyone who bought it.
 
For me that would be GTA V. Large beautiful world with zero interaction. Features restricted to missions. Focus on online while making online a boring grind fest to push their micro transactions agenda. The game had huge potential but it isn't fun at all. One would expect the same company that made San Andreas to deliver a fun game in GTA V but Rockstar failed. I'm all I'm very disappointed that my most anticipated game of the last 5 years is a minute fraction of what it could have been.
 
Decided to give the console version of Diablo III a go after being disappointed to hell by the PC version last year.

Nope - still awful. Most disappointing for sure.
 
Metal Gear Rising for me easily.

Thing was like 7 hours max, 1 freaking level was just a boss fight. Just the fight, not getting there or anything.
It felt rushed, unfinished, combat also felt unpolished to me, it was such a step down after Bayonetta.
Story was just mind boggeling bad.

It really put me off P*, thankfully W101 was brilliant.
 
Man, ya'll are bumming me out for enjoying SMTIV so much :p

If nothing else, it's clear that I need to play other entries in the FE and SMT series now, though I guess that was already the plan.
 
Assassins creed 3. I love the ac series but I never traded in a game in disgust so fast. Also skyrim, I thought I would like it but I never did finish it.
 
Bioshock Infinite: There are worse games, but none disappointed me quite as much. Both gameplay and story were no where close to where I expected them to be.

The story: The "alternative universe"-angle is one of the laziest things you can do in my opinion. It is the writers way of throwing all logic out of the window and getting away with everything.

The gameplay: Limited to two often fairly standard weapons it lacked the creativity I expected to be there. Also it looked real mushy on the Playstation, so I often felt I am shooting at life-bars, not enemies.

Lost interest half-way through the game and stopped playing. Looked up the ending on Youtube and was happy I didn't "hang in there" for it...
 
Wait, Tomb Raider was this year?! I had completely forgotten about that.

Woof, that was terrible. More explosions per minute than a Call of Duty game. The tombs were such a joke. The characters were infuriating. It felt like an Assassin's Creed game, just a bunch of shit thrown at you but nothing really enjoyable in the gameplay or mechanics. I've seen everything in that game before and in better fashion. The platforming isn't as automatic as an Uncharted, but the influence is clear and I don't like that series at all so didn't appreciate any of that.

Made me want to play more of Tomb Raider Anniversary or Underworld.

Everything else I've played this year has been good to great. Didn't bother with Bioshock.
 
Kodiak said:
The Walking Dead game pulled off a man doing what he has to to survive. In TLOU, you are killing generic character models who aren't real human beings by the dozens. I would imagine the average player kills well over a hundred people by the end of the game.

Not even the most heinous villains in the Walking Dead Comics have killed that many people. The game is forced to become ridiculous and jump the shark by the perceived need to be a sixty dollar value. The Walking Dead has the freedom to be closer to reality through the freedom its format allows. It's ridiculous, and Naughty Dog could do better without the constraints.
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I think the average is 150, though I don't know if that includes infected.

It's such a shame. Had the AI performed more consistently like the E3 build they could have gotten away with maybe 50 max human enemies (including those in moments where you aren't expected to kill them). Heck, at that point you could name and record dialogue for each of them. But there were points where they would send human enemies at you in waves. And too often did you have to kill.

Really, the game should have followed the principles of Shadow of the Colossus, and it would be laughing in the face of Uncharted's dissonant narrative.
 
Bioshock Infinite. No question.

Reason: Highest expectations since it's the true sequel to Bioshock, which is a game I loved. Then this game arrives and not only manages to be an average game but also manages to shit on the first Bioshock with its "trying to make a very smart story and twist in the end, but really it's just shit thrown into the wall that we also don't really understand".

The gameplay is appaling, arenas after arenas without anything special in combat except for some of them that used the sky lines. Lacks cohesion in the plot, leaving the clear feeling that some chapters were cut near the end of development.

I've played a lot of average games but what is really special with Bioshock Infinite is that also managed to diminish the love I had for the first Bioshock. So congrats Irrational.
 
Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I was hoping that game could capture me for longer than it did. I have absolutely no desire to go back to it. In the end it had improvements but they just weren't enough.
 
Industrial Voodoo said:
Bioshock Infinite

It was a poorly written multiverse travel story (riddled with plot holes) wrapped around a bland shooter with bland enemy and level design that dragged on far too long.

I think the praise the game received is largely the result of how hard up gamers are good writing and how low the bar has been set as a result.

If it had been a movie, it would've been instantly forgotten, and if it had a standard FPS script, it would've also been instantly forgotten.
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This man gets it .
 
GTA V

Clunky controls, bad framerate, missions mostly involving driving to some place and just killing a bunch of people, boring grindy multiplayer. Overall I enjoyed GTA IV better.

I enjoyed GTA IV's multiplayer a lot more because it didn't involve any grind to get money to buy stuff, just cause destruction and make your own game modes with your friends.
 
Sim city 5 was horrible and destroyed the hopes of getting a good city simulator for a long time...

So many things are wrong with that game, the only online mode is the least of its problems... Lies, city size, dlc focused, region play... All is broken as hell...
 
Sonic: Lost Cause (both systems): Looks glorious, the pre-release footage built up hype like nothing before, the first few levels are good. Then, whether you're on Wii-U or 3DS, the game shows it's real colours with bad design, bad bosses and some of the worst Sonic levels ever.

Batman Arkham Oranges: I actually love this game but the bugs were a huge letdown. It needed a few more months in the oven. Remember when Asylum slipped constantly down the release schedule, only to be released as one immaculate, polished game? That didn't happen here.

God of War: Inconsequential: Prequel no-one asked for, covers nothing in the story we needed to see, full of dull puzzles and dull moments (awesome intro and final boss aside, that doesn't make a game) combat is different but not necessarily better, sound bugs still persist to the date, and the game was an excuse to create multiplayer in a series that didn't really need it. Multiplayer wasn't bad, but I found it too chaotic, confusing, and ultimately short-lived. The result is a GOW that feels to me like a teensy spin-off, not a main instalment. For me, this game broke a perfect streak.

Tomb Raider: I loved it, but it was incredibly short, had a bad story/characters and wasn't challenging enough. A shame because everything else was spot on. Needed more substance. Unfortunately tries to do many things that The Last of Us knocked out of the fucking park a few months later. Looking forward to a better sequel.

Plants vs Zombies 2: For locking some of my favourite plants behind a paywall.
 
Don't shoot me please.

The last of us.

After all of the hype, I expected more than a game that really was just a slower paced uncharted in terms of combat with shallow attempts at stealth and crafting. Plus a story that doesn't really go anywhere until about half way through the game.

It's one if my most overrated games of the gen and so my most disappointing game of 2013.
 
I haven't bought a lot of 2013-dated games but Dead Space 3 is the one that comes to mind for disappointment.

This series has been heading in all the wrong directions from the brilliant first game. The tension isn't there; the isolated solo feeling is gone; you no longer feel you have to be careful with resources; micro transactions added.
 
Bioshock Infinite

The gunfights are bad: enemies appearing from nowhere, boring level design, no inventory Coins everywhere to pick up. Powers are useless.

The story sucks: the entire revolution subplot is a joke, it looks like it has almost been cut out from the game. The ending is ruffian and overcomplicated whith broken counterintuitive rules who don't make any sense.

Reading about the development troubles this game had I hope Levine won't direct any other AAA game in this way.
 
This was my reaction to the AAA console games I've played(Bioshock, TLoU, Tomb Raider) this year:

iiKW1somD71qg.png


Infinite was poor man's Bioshock and that was a poor man's System Shock 2(antitrop :D)

TLoU - What AHA-Lambda said, specially disappointed with the half-baked survival(if you can call it that) mechanics and the enemy AI.

Tomb Raider - Uncharted with tits, a bunch of melodrama and a deep, deep distrust for the player.
 
I wasn't really disappointed this year because I went into every game with the right expectations.

Well, except the damn "tombs" in Tomb Raider. I guess it was a bit naive of me to expect anything resembling classic TR in there but they weren't even close. Wastes of time.
 
CyanideFuse said:
I haven't bought a lot of 2013-dated games but Dead Space 3 is the one that comes to mind for disappointment.

This series has been heading in all the wrong directions from the brilliant first game. The tension isn't there; the isolated solo feeling is gone; you no longer feel you have to be careful with resources; micro transactions added.
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I agree with you on the lack of atmosphere and any tension in DS3, but I've played through the game twice without any need for extra resources through micro transactions or the supply packs you get. How did micro transactions make the game any worse? I see this come up a lot in micro transaction threads as an example yet they can be completely ignored.
 
AHA-Lambda said:
Don't shoot me please.

The last of us.

After all of the hype, I expected more than a game that really was just a slower paced uncharted in terms of combat with shallow attempts at stealth and crafting. Plus a story that doesn't really go anywhere until about half way through the game.

It's one if my most overrated games of the gen and so my most disappointing game of 2013.
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Don t buy into the hype, ever if it s not you generating it.
Everything you say was perfectly reasonable to expecr considering the previous productions of the studio.
 
FACE said:
TLoU - What AHA-Lambda said, specially disappointed with the half-baked survival(if you can call it that) mechanics and the enemy AI.
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I viewed it in contrast with other recent AAA games, notably Bioshock Infinite. In that lined (combined with the fact I wasn't as completely enamored with Uncharted like many were) it was a very pleasant surprise, still basically an AAA game but including aspects that freshened things up and were kind of forgotten by those games. If I had been thinking seriously of it as a survival story relative to something like Walking Dead or more serious survival games, yeah, I think I'd have been very disappointed. Though it also helps I blew through it in a rental rather than blowing $60!

Still, TLoU's a plesant surprise for me, but not GotY. Not even among the AAA games, I'd probably go with GTAV just for being more my flavor and one of the better executed GTA games, but for my personal game of the year it'd probably SMTIV, A Link Between Worlds, or something else entirely.
 
Alfredo said:
Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut on the PS3

System performance was even worse than the original PS3 version. It was 20 dollars more than the original 360 version. They didn't even fix the map in the game, which is one of the few things that Swery expressed disappointment with in the original. Also some really poor DLC that didn't add much to the game.
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Yup. I own the original JP PS3 version and was really disgusted by Director's Cut.

Their idea of "fixing" combat was just making Easy the default difficulty and removing the others. Improved controls is just remapping some buttons. Visual improvements consisted of adding gradients to the UI and obnoxious lighting which tanked the framerate even harder than before. Extra story was nothing more than a cutscene after each chapter
to frame it as if York was reading the story to his grandchild
, which added absolutely nothing to the plot. DLC consisted of 3 cars, a few suits with abilities (one of which was basically cheating) and a house. Even the ending credits were made worse somehow.

Hell, they actually broke more than they fixed - I found a ton of bugs relating to minor and mostly redundant changes they made. The map was never fixed, framerate isn't improved, no new content - it's quite frankly the most insulting and worst "Director's Cut" I've ever seen.
 
I went into games with my expectations tempered appropriately so I can't think of any true disappointments. Still, there's a general thread of disappointment in the way that I kept my expectations relatively low, yet, even taking that into account most of the key AAA games I played just barely went above them rather than truly surpassing them.

Tomb Raider was decently enjoyable for what it is, but that still means it pissed away just about everything unique about the series, and the replacement shooting was extremely shallow mechanically. The story also barely rose above Crystal's previous Tomb Raider's, and the writing in those was frequently pretty bad even by game standards. The soundtrack also wins my award for the single most disappointing aspect of a game this year as I literally can't remember a single note of it. Conversely, even when the games disappointed, the soundtracks of earlier TR's were consistently some of my favourites. The worst part is that, unlike other aspects, I know this generic music direction has basically no chance of changing at all in future games (Underworld's soundtrack was already going in this direction, although it still had some gems in it).

Bioshock Infinite was in love with throwing the player into generic arena shootouts and artificially went from one extreme to the other (completely peaceful moments contrasted with shooting 20+ enemies, with no in-between), the balance was just as bad as the earlier Bioshocks and the story seemed more interested in being clever than being good.

Dead Space 3 was a game dragged down by chasing bullet-points and providing "content" even when that content was crap. It's also one of the pioneers of being obviously driving by microtransaction bullshit; while the game is unbalanced enough for it not to matter much, it's obvious that a lot of the mechanics were based around it, leading to facebook-game busywork like the mining droid things.

That's a small selection. I think The Last of Us was the only high-profile game I had reasonably high expectations for that were both delivered on or/and surpassed.
 
Messofanego said:
Tomb Raider was a game where I was like "what were they thinking" the whole time.
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Absolutely. I didn't hate it but every corner you turned you were slapped with a healthy dose of missed potential. The huge open areas were great, especially the one with the crashed plane, but they barely used them for anything. But I kinda expected that so I can't say I was really disappointed, you know.

+1 for using AVGN tho :lol
 
DigitalDevilSummoner said:
Lot's of good games in this thread which turned out to be that classic "look down on games most people liked"
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What did you expect? It's a thread about games that disappointed you. A major factor in disappointment can be the positive reception the game has received that gets you excited to play it, only to find your own experience doesn't match the majority. People are rarely let down by a poor game that everyone agrees is poor.
 
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It took everything that made the first game great and scrapped it, in return we get a shitty story-driven game that wasn't scary or tense for one second and was over in 3 hours (that was actually a good thing). Frictional's new IP is probably gonna bring the goods, but next time don't give your celebrated IP to a shitty dev.

There are more disappointing games like Bioshock Infinite and Saint's Row IV, but those didn't hurt as much as Amnesia did.
 
Gears of War Judgment

Changed controls. Campaign sucks. No horde. Shitty multiplayer modes. No locust in multiplayer. Probably more that I forgot, I havent played it for months and probably never will again.

(I loved the first 3 games)


Ryse

boring Combat
 
Atruvius said:
GTA V

Clunky controls, bad framerate, missions mostly involving driving to some place and just killing a bunch of people, boring grindy multiplayer. Overall I enjoyed GTA IV better.

I enjoyed GTA IV's multiplayer a lot more because it didn't involve any grind to get money to buy stuff, just cause destruction and make your own game modes with your friends.
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How the hell is that even possible? Yuck.
 
Company of Heroes 2. Bought it at launch and only played a couple of hours of campaign after having played 40+ in CoH1's singleplayer. The first 3 - 4 missions in the game consist of you getting pushed back by tons of enemies which means that you constantly have to retreat. The missions in the first game where you had to hold down an area were already my least favorite, but having ones where you will always have to fall back no matter how well you do really didn't sit well with me. After the so manyth mission like this I just kinda stopped playing the game.

Really disappointing.
 
The Last of Us: I did the same thing with Uncharted, with so much hype I expected something extra-revolutionary. But no, it turned out to be a regular survival horror with zombies. Good graphics, though.

God of War Ascension: I don't think this is about Greek mythology anymore. Most boring GoW game in the series. Franchise needs to be killed.

FUSE: Why, Insomniac, why. This game must have stayed as Overstrike. What you did was unforgivable.

Pokémon XY: I guess number 69 didn't make me chuckle this time.

Killzone: Mercenary: Bland and boring. Vita doesn't need anymore useless FPS's.

Mario Party Island Tour: I don't know what I expected. I guess after MP9, my hope for series was restored a little bit. But now completely disappeared.
 
Both "GoWs", both were uninspired and blatant cash ins for both franchises. You get the sense that if you never see either franchise again, you would be quite fine with that.
 
God of War Ascension...

The only game this year that has genuinly made me think... why?

It was pointless, unimaginative and the only part of the game that made me remotely sit up was the graphics of the final boss. With the exception of that moment of graphical genius, I was just going through the motions and forgot half of what happened....

Also, multiplayer sucked...
 
If were gonna make a list...


I can't think of too many in 2013 but I can in the past two years..

Battlefield 3 (single player abysmal and as much as I wanted to like the multiplayer I didn't)
Skyrim , the game was to open ended for me and I just couldn't find anything that was fun to push me to finish it. The characters were bland and sounded the same, the graphics were ugly and the animation was laughable.
Assassins creed 3. I really thought it would be good, looked at the reviews and learned as much as I could. Instead the game was boring, first wo hours confusing and nothing ever pushed me to finish it. That was the first game I traded in without finishing it.
GTA 5. Love the single player , really loathing the multiplayer.
 
Puppeteer

Overly long cutscenes, boring gameplay. Not really bad, but a huge letdown.

The Cave

Neither the story side nor the puzzle side impressed me in any way. I don't have any desire whatsoever to play it with the other characters.
 
For me it's Fire Emblem.
I mean it's great and everything but in the end I expected it to grip me more than it did and I ended up playing other games. It's no Path of Radiance I guess....
I'll rttp later I guess.

Also tbh I sorta played Bioshock, tLoU and some other AAA games of the week but I expected nothing so I wasn't that let down (although Bioshock take the shit cake to a whole new level).
tLoU is just not fun though, as far as Zombie gaming goes I'd say you fight to many normal people making your character be a mass murderer to make me care that much I'd say.
IDK if that makes sense...
 
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