Here are the games that WERE highest on my "Most Anticipated" list and then failed to deliver in the most spectacular fashion. Checking out this lineup brings back horrible memories to this day...Please join me on my trip of embittered anguish.
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It's also worth mentioning this entire list is subjective and my own personal opinion, so please keep that in mind.
Metroid: Other M is a shockingly deplorable shift for the Metroid series and a total and complete assassination of Samus Aran's character. I am appalled Nintendo and Team Ninja let this go through. It's poorly written, poorly acted, poorly conceived, poorly executed and actually kind of sexist and offensive. The soapy, immature story and insultingly phoned in acting demeans both Samus as a character and us as players and the gameplay is drastically oversimplified to the point of becoming thoroughly counterintuitive. It's not just the "Biggest Disappointment" in gaming I can think of, but also an enormous step back for gaming as a a medium, specifically gender roles. It's without exaggeration the absolute worst game I have ever played in my life and actually managed to offend me a great deal, something that's hard to do. In addition, the nasty firestorm surrounding it on the Internet makes me cringe and pray for the continued safety of civil discourse.
Marsupilami is a Belgian comic series about a legendary jungle animal with a seven meter long tail revered as a God by native peoples who is, in reality, lovable, mischievous, pure-hearted and fun-loving (though somewhat naive) party animal. Marsupilami is, bar none, my favourite cartoon character of all time. Once I found out a Marsupilami game had been made for the Sega Genesis in the wake of the bold, yet ultimately failed Disney cartoon series based on the franchise I searched long and hard to find it excited by what it might be like. Once I played it, however, I found an ill-conceived, frustrating, broken and obscenely hard puzzle platformer that's absolutely filled to the brim with dumb design decisions and stunningly bad AI. It plays out as the very definition of "missed opportunity": Given the source material this could've been a brilliant little game filled with clever gameplay mechanics and puzzles. Instead, no-one seemed to care and put out a title really unworthy of the character or the attention of players and fans.
Here comes yet another game hyped up as the electronic second coming that fell rather flat, at least for me. I understand a lot of people disliked the freeform exploration and art design of Wind Waker (one of my favorite games) and I respect that. However, I don't feel that excuses recycling a plot wholesale, especially in a series as story-centric as Zelda. Twilight Princess's story seems practically identical to some of its predecessors, most notable A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. I also found the art design bland, boring and uninspiring, the open world really empty and the NPCs very grating in their constant fawning admiration of Link. The biggest letdown was the tacked on sword mechanics for the Wii version (which I got): I was expecting the sword mecahnics to be as realistic and fluid as possible and Twilight Princess didn't deliver for me. Thankfully, that problem at least seems addressed in the forthcoming Skyward Sword. I may hold an unpopular opinion with this one, but it is mine and mine alone and I make no apologies.
Those who read my Favourite Games list know FFXII is pretty high up there on the list. Initial promos for this outing lead me to believe it'd be a cross between FFXII style exploration, real time, non-random monster battles and Devil May Cry style over-the-top combat antics. Perhaps I was misguided in thinking so, but, nevertheless, I couldn't have been more excited. Five years later, what I got instead was a polygonal Gauntlet crossed with a hilariously ponderous, convulted and narmy story. Needles to say, I was surprised and disappointed. Bayonetta has made up for my deflated ego brought upon by FFXIII, but I'm still sad. FFXIII isn't a poorly made game by any stretch and it's fine for what it is, but its definitely not what I expected, nor wanted. Also, the PR campaign was downright dishonest and misleading in my opinion, making it seem like SquareEnix were ashamed of what they'd made. As of right now it's simply one of the biggest gaming letdown I've ever had.
Need I say more? Laughable. Pre-release trailers made it look like the most epic thing ever and a killer app for both Sonic and Gen 7, but the final product sunk under its own weight. Combine barely functional controls, unfinished gameplay mechanics and archaic game design and wrap it up in a ludicrous, confusing and controversial story and you get a giant mess of a game that can't hold itself together long enough for us to care.
This one, in actuality is probably far more egregious then Twilight Princess (the latter being more a result of Nintendo trying to please everybody). Here is a game I expected to be tailored to fans of Wind Waker hence the working title "Wind Waker 2" and all). Most people who liked Wind Waker liked it for its beautiful art design, giant, freeform ocean with islands to chart and explore at will, treasure to find and intricate story arcs with NPCs to work out. Absolutely none of that is in Phantom Hourglass. Instead, we have a boat that only goes along a connect-the-dots line, nondescript islands of little note, a less memorable cast (including a rather uncomfortable and distasteful chickification of Captain Tetra, one of my favourite characters in the Zelda series) and an annoying-as-f&#k dungeon we were forced to repeat with faux-Metal Gear Solid stealth missions. This wasn't the sequel I think most Wind Waker fans were hoping for.
When you make a sequel to one of the most beloved games of all time after years of fans' bated breath, I suppose there will always be an impossible shadow to fill. However, the developers behind NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams apparently decided to barely even TRY. It may be just me, but I feel this game failed to evolve the franchise at all from its Saturn roots. Perhaps I was the only one dreaming of a sprawling, open sky to loop around in, reminiscent of the Wing Cap from Super Mario 64. The pseudo-3D design of the original NiGHTS worked great on the Saturn, but I expected something more on the Wii and this game just didn't deliver on any of my expectations. I also found the voice acting unnecessary, distracting and annoying. It seems like Sonic Team somehow tried to do both too little and too much at the same time, if that makes sense. A tragic case and a game I sadly quickly forgot.
We got 4 games based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of my favourite TV series of all time. Crossroads of Time (for the Super Nintendo and Genesis) and The Fallen (for PC and Mac) were both top quality games in their genre (platformer and 3rd person shooter respectively) and perfect adaptations of the source material to the video game medium, not to mention two of my favourite games ever. Harbringer (a PC adventure game) I've never played, so I can't comment. THIS, however, is a let down of galactic proportions. Crashed install sequences, random freezing and lockouts during gameplay and a crippling number of other bugs completely sank what could've been a great naval combat sim in the vein of Starfleet Command 1-3 based on DS9's climactic Dominion War. I don't think I ever got past the first mission-Not because it was hard, but simply because the game wouldn't function any longer. An unfortunately failed tribute to a classic modern epic.
A motion controlled SSX game sounds like a fantastic idea in theory, but in practice Blur didn't seem to deliver on its potential. With remade tracks from SSX 3 and...not much else, frankly, I found this entry really bland and uninspiring. Not to mention I painfully missed Lucy Liu as Elise and all the voice actors, really. My copy also had the bad habit of freezing up and crashing a lot... While I still whip out SSX Tricky to this day, Blur remains stuffed in a box somewhere untouched.
Nowhere NEAR as bad as Sonic 06, but Unleashed has to make the list for reasons of its own. Promised as a return to classic form, Sonic Unleashed proved to be anything but. Many gamers (myself included) gave up on it as soon as we heard about the now infamous (and infamously silly) "Werehog" concept. However, I was suckered back into the game after hearing people rave about the supposedly perfect and progressive daytime stages. Picking the game up, I find the controls to be practically impossible to get functional and the level design so insidious it reminds me of a sadistic ROM hack. The Adventure-style hub world (which I hate) still hanging around was one further straw. Sonic Unleashed may have showed signs of a step in the right direction for our speedy little blue friend, but mostly it's just plain cruel. Thankfully, Sonic 4 and Sonic Colours seem to have finally, miraculously, given gamers fresh air.
And something Final Fantasy XII-related makes it onto the list again. It's not a bad game per se, but it's so far removed and simplified from the original XII that it's like night and day going from one to the other (which makes sense as this was originally not planned as a sequel to FFXII). I solved most of the problems by sending the whole team to mow down whatever enemies were in the way, circling the map a few times and razing all the items. There's very little strategy and it got boring fast. It has its own charm and moments of cleverness and it's a good game in its own right, but I'd still pick the original over it any day.
I can't say I expected MUCH from this one, but how hard is it to make a detective-style adventure game featuring Scooby characters? Instead, we got a very shallow LEGO rip-off with clunky controls, bland, ugly levels and a grating art style.
Not for the game itself, but what could have been. The fact that this game will never set sail is positively tragic.
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