2014: A Year of Disappointment

With Jeff already announcing his pick for the most disappointing game of the year I feel like the Game of the Year discussion podcasts will have plenty to talk about with regards to the "Most Disappointing Game" category. Jeff already has Destiny, but I can think of plenty other games that the rest of the crew would love to throw into the mix. With the big splash that the Watch Dogs E3 demo had, I can already see this game getting a lot of recommendations based purely on everybody's reaction to that demo. Watching the Patrick and Alex podcasts, I also hope they mention The Walking Dead Season 2, and I want to hear other peoples thoughts on that game. Other games such as Assassins Creed Unity, Dark Souls 2, and Borderlands 1.5 could also be up for contention.

Can't wait for the Game of the Year discussion podcasts to start.

For games available on console, Shadow of mordor, wolfstein, sunset overdrive and bayonetta seem like the four biggies, absolutely this was a year of disappointment. PC had so many great games but they mostly weren't of that size, lots of small stuff, which aren't easy to pick out of. The big pc games were pretty much all just excellent ports.

I think it's a problem of them not having enough time to see everything, and of what they did see, it was alot of weak stuff ala unity.

Huh. I thought Borderlands Pre-Sequel was pleasantly surprising.

Hang on I'm confused. Are you suggesting that those games were disappointments? I must be misreading you, because those seem like they might be the goty contenders. But then again that might be what you were saying

Also, I would hardly say Dark Souls 2 is a disappointment. Although it's more lacking in lore and map design thank DS1, I thought what they did with the mechanics was great. And it made the pvp not a backstab fishing circle-fest. Also, the dlc is some of the best dark souls content ive played. But I could see how that in and of itself might be disappointing.

Eh, people said this last year. I'm not disappointed from this year's releases. Even some of the "broken" games are getting fixed and made up for in decent ways.

Overall I think 2014 was over-hyped, similar to last year. As a consumer base, especially since we tend to be the more fervent and active base, we are more than ready for the next big game. WatchDogs, DriveClub, and AC: Unity were all seen as some next-gen games that were going to set the bar a bit higher. Reality deflated us a bit. 2014 also saw a lot of opportunities for decent to superb games delay into 2015. I think some developers were lucky enough to financially be in the position where a delay wouldn't kill them.

2015 seems packed full of releases almost from beginning to end. Every game on the calendar won't be great or even good but the more shots you take the more likely you'll hit the target. I think 2013/14 suffered from development issues and expectation issues more than anything.

I don't understand peoples instance on always looking towards the negatives and always focusing energies towards the negatives. Youtube personas like Angry Joe do it and they are the worst type of thing for the industry. These GOTY shows almost don't even seem to be about celebrating games anymore, seeing as how so many of the categories are there to tear them down instead of say, "hey these things that we play are pretty cool." This fascination on focusing on negative things is irksome. I wish people would focus more on the positive stuff.

If you want to argue that it is like this because games were particularly bad this year, that's valid, but how about we try and think of what was good this year instead of sensationalize the things that failed. I'm not really getting my point across in the way that I want, but around every forum corner you see someone complaining about how this sucked, or that sucked instead of saying hey guys these set of things were real cool.

I guess it was a terrible year if you put the blinders on and only see the things you hate. I for one think there were several good releasing showing the best gaming have to offer from the small scale to AAA productions. Games from Transistor to WoW: Warlords of Draenor where stellar.

If there was something "terrible" this year, it was how attitudes of video gamer has been show to be extremely fickle where it lead people to believe the hype on something then a day later turn on it screaming it is POS. This the same fickleness is the poison that feeds into the gamergame garbage.

Eh. Such whining. 2012 was far worse.

This year had more than ten games I wanted to put on my best-of list. I couldn't come up with more than three or four from 2012. Dark Souls II, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros on 3DS and Wii U, Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country, Shadow of Mordor, Titanfall, and a better-than-usual Call of Duty game...and some people are really into Destiny. I dunno, seems pretty good.

And last year is a bit unfair to compare against. It had so many amazing games, especially toward the last half of the year. Rayman Legends and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Super Mario 3D World are so transcendentally good.

Edit: Oh yeah, don't forget Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Brothers, Devil May Cry, Guacamelee, BioShock Infinite...it's telling that The Last of Us had no place on my list because there were so many other better games for me. The last time a year was like that for me was 2010 or 2011. It's a good time to be a gamer.

It was a slow year. Not major disasters that are actually fun to rag on, but simply misses. And some hits! I enjoyed Dark Souls 2. I enjoyed Wolfenstein, I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor, and I am loving Farcry 4, the complete opposite of Farcry 3 that so put me off. And there are other games I will explore. Divinity, Dragon Quest (I have trouble with Fantasy on the whole, though I love Science Fiction) and other titles, AAA and not.

I think I would describe this year as adhering to the base line. It was good enough. I've been spoiled by earlier years.

Destiny should win that category hands down with Watch Dogs coming in as a close second. I doubt anyone will fight for Destiny besides Brad a little bit.

That's what I think too. Though maybe the pleasant surprise comes in the form of "Hey, I still like this loot stuff, but the writing isn't aggressively terrible this time!" Okay, it's more than that. Probably enjoying it more than Borderlands 2.

I also understand why some might consider Dark Souls II the most disappointing game of the year, I just disagree. If Destiny doesn't win, then either someone has made an eloquent argument for like... Watch_Dogs or something, or the GB crew has dun messed up.

There's a lot of good stuff this year, too. Sort of a bandwagoning on this being a shitty year with a couple of broken but not exactly on fire games having their issues magnified.

I have to respectfully disagree with your title (not your premise). I don't think there was that many disappointing games this year. Sure, there are a lot to choose from for "Most disappointing" category, but there were a lot of great games this year.

And... Dark Souls 2 isn't even close to that list. Dark Souls 2 may not be as good as Dark Souls, but it really couldn't have been. It's damn close, though, and still a great game. I don't see how it's so "disappointing" to people. It's still a really fun and engaging game to play. It's definitely in my top 3 this year if not #1.

@arbitrarywater: I'm getting off topic here, but you know what helped? Fresh voice actors in the bit parts. I loved that.

Anyways, yeah, Destiny's clearly the front runner.

DriveClub still doesn't work.

man, this forum is pretty bad for adopting internet nonsense as fact, just because jeff doesn't like destiny doesn't actually mean anything for destiny, and just because some whiners decided 2014 was a poor year for games doesn't actually mean anything for all the games in 2014. snap out of it.

There were plenty of games that were good this year (heck I was able to come up with a GOTY list real fast). So, writing off the year feels a little too much "Video games are over" hyperbole to me.

Nothing can top Dark Souls 2 for me.

It's not like it's even a bad game by any stretch. Just didn't work for me in a very profound way.

When I made my Top Ten list I had to cut it down from 26 games, don't be so negative. Games aren't always gonna be perfect, there was still a lot of great gamest this year.

Most disappointing doesn't mean worst. Destiny is in my top 10 games this year. I like it and play it a lot. But it is definitely my most disappointing game this year by far. There was a vast gap between what I was expecting and what it turned out to be.