Brink - I was a huge fan of ET, and while I saw potential in ETQW I couldnt get into it due to the vehicles and clunky combat. When Brink promised a return to form by removing vehicles and making the combat more fluid, I got really excited. After playing it for a few hours and really trying to enjoy it I came to the conclusion that Splash Damage got lucky with ET, the multiplayer formula established by Nerve in RtCW only needed a few tweaks, and the Q3 engine was already awesome - Splash damage brought very little to the party beyond the level design. Sad times.
FF13 - I've loved most of the games in the FF franchise, mostly due to the crazy worlds, character progression and non linear exploration. FF13 threw away most of this in favour of flashy cutscenes. Ironically I gave up just when the game started to open up a bit, but after 40 or so hours of grinding through corridors I just couldnt bring myself to care.
Spore - So many of Will Wright's games were deep and replayable, so when I heard about the premise for Spore I was immediately excited. I thought the long development time would be spent polishing and refining deep mechanics and replayability, but it just turned out that they were trying to find a way to bring many disparate ideas together, which ultimately failed. The final product felt like they had stripped out the complexity in an attempt to make it work. The whole experience really soured me on Will Wright, and is a very black spot on his otherwise excellent reputation and legacy.
SimCity(2013) - The game had so much potential, but it was ruined by the terrible business decisions that were presumably thrust on it by higher ups. Server stability aside, if the game had been designed around larger cities and not been forced down the horrible multiplayer route they chose it could have been really great. I was also not a fan of the resource management side of it, mayoring is not about producing and selling coal or other natural resources.
Resident Evil 6 - After having a hard time adjusting to the direction of the franchise post RE4, I was actually quite a big fan of RE5. While I still havent played RE6, the abysmal reviews really seemed to indicate that RE6 was everything I didn't want out of a new RE game.
Broken Age - Admittedly I pumped lot of money into this kickstarter without really thinking about it, but the product as it stands today ended up feeling really shallow. After so many ingenious puzzles and adventure games from Tim Schafer, I was expecting more. The story was charming, but as a game it just isn't very interesting. I was also really disappointed that they split it in half. Act I felt like an appetiser, and I doubt there will be a main course to follow. I'm still holding out hope that Act II will be better, but it seems unlikely at this point. It's also a little worrying that we aren't hearing more about it seeing as the second half is supposed to be released sometime soon.
Bioshock Franchise - I was a huge System Shock/Looking Glass Studios fan. They crafted deep RPG games and amazing non-linear worlds with many ways of making your way through the game. System Shock 1 was a stellar game, years ahead of it's time, and still holds up today (go play it!). After hyping Bioshock as a spiritual successor to the "shock" franchise, I was excited for more of the same. What I got was a very pretty shooter with some interesting philosophies underlying the fiction, what I missed was an immersive non-linear world with deep mechanics. They should've made a fresh start instead of toying with my expectations like that! Each subsequent game in the franchise has moved further and further away from the games I love, and as with the Simcity franchise it's indicative of an industry wide trend that studios are prioritising accessibility over depth.
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