Most Disappointing Game of the Decade?

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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With the new decade here we've started to see "best of the decade" lists pop up. While I think it's great to celebrate the art that moved us and enthralled us the most I'm also curious what game disappointed everyone the most. While the end of the PS3/360 gen brought some of the greatest games of the decade, this last gen brought a lot of bland sequels and homogenized game design across the gaming landscape. There were also some games pushing the ideas of games forward that surely missed the mark for some (RDR2, BOTW, MGS V are all pretty divisive games despite all of their praise. and innovation)

Personally I've found most of my disappointment in smaller games. Night in the Woods was the first game that came to mind. I want smaller more personal stories in games, but I feel like the writing just isn't there with most attempts to be so beholden to some sort of style that undermines the emotions it's reaching for (Oxenfree, What Remains of Edith Finch). I've dropped out of community college (twice!) and have moved back in with my parents, I've struggled with self-medication, friendships drifting apart, artistic passions growing cold etc. So when I heard the pitch of this game I was ready to be moved and fall in love. Instead I got characters that felt cartoonishly unreal and more like someone's twitter personality than a genuine attempt at character. The kicker for me was how choppy and inconsistent the presentation was. From bad frame rate to inconsistent transition between scenes and gameplay elements it felt like everything just needed another pass or two and someone making sure UI and mechanics were consistent across the game. I don't know when games are going to get their mumble-core crowning achievement but I've been disappointed in pretty much every attempt they've made that I got my hands on, despite deeply wanting them to connect with me.

So what game most disappointed you this past decade?

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HoboZero

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Lots to choose from:

Aliens: Colonial Marines finally came out, and it sucked.

Duke Nukem finally came out, and it sucked.

SimCity got a sequel, and it sucked.

Bioware managed to make a Mass Effect game that sucked so bad it likely killed the franchise in one shot.

Bethesda followed up on 3 beloved Fallout titles with an always online cluster****

Hideo Kojima was untethered from Metal Gear, given a large budget and seemingly unlimited access to any actor/director/celebrity he wanted, and the result was, apologies to those who liked it: still hugely disappointing.

I gave Star Citizen $35 bucks 8 years ago and didn't get anything for my money, does that count? :)

Really, the most disappointing thing in games over the last 10 years was "gamers". Between gamergate, harassment campaigns, endless fucking gatekeeping, literal shit flinging, railing about "SJWs", gambling site owning influencers, and a mother fucker who shot up a Madden tournament, my expectations for the community could not possibly be lower than they are now. Until the next shitbag "gamer" does something terrible and I have have to re-calibrate. Again.

(Props to this community for being relatively free from horror, but I honestly attribute that mostly to a stellar mod staff)

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AlexW00d

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I could never be disappointed with a game that tried something new, tried something interesting or different, even if I didn't like it, but I will forever be disappointed with games that DID something new or interesting and then their sequels get rid of that and become bland boring messes to try and appeal to the masses. The biggest case of this for me were the sequels to Metro 2033. That first game was so so good at what it was doing - atmosphere - and Last Light took all of that away but didn't replace it with anything else, and made the gameplay easier and plentiful.

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htr10

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@hobozero:

I feel like you nailed it with the things you listed in this post.

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OMGFather

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Mass Effect: Andromeda for sure. Killed a beloved series. Even worse when you realize what they killed it for - Anthem. Another disappointing game made solely to get EA money in the oversaturated "live service" game market.

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#6  Edited By Stephen_Von_Cloud

a few thoughts come to mind:

Dark Souls III. It's not a total wreck but the myriad of ways they slowly lost their way with the series to my taste are very disappointing. The difficulty of Demon's and Dark Souls 1 was perfect and unfortunately they just kept needing to add more and more bosses with more and more phases. It's subtle stuff on paper but for me it ruined the experience overall.

I also have to put up the Deus Ex reboot games. If you squint they seem to be hitting all the Deus Ex points you want but the performances are mostly bad (and not charmingly so), the levels are extremely cramped compared to the original (which is a major negative to how these games work, allowing the exploration and analysis of spaces and ways to tackle them to unfold in a manner that seems full of options rather than predictible), the art style, world and tech they went with makes no fucking sense as a prequel, the stories are lackluster on their own... just a bummer in every way. And some people still talk these games up. I was disappointing by the first one and when people talked up the second I checked it out and was disappointed all over again. Not good games and it makes me feel like people really don't get why the original is one of the best games ever.

One point I remember vividly is not getting into a club in the first game and saying to myself "lol i bet there's a vent right here in this alley directly next to this bouncer that lets me in" as a joke but then it was totally there just like 5 feet away lol. Not good.

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bigsocrates

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I think for me it might be Destiny, which is weird because it's one of my most played games of the decade. That's because when games come out and are bad I generally either don't play them or I bounce off them quickly. Destiny drew me in with its demo and gunplay and the promise of some kind of narrative or purpose lurking beneath it all, but in the end it was just an unsatisfying grindfest. I regret the time I spent with it and I didn't play any of the DLC or the second game, which is kind of unusual for me. It had a ton of potential but the weird/exploitative decisions they made just permanently turned me off.

Alternatively the Middle-Earth: Shadow of ____ series. The first game was hugely hyped but I thought it was pretty mediocre (though not bad) and did not care about the nemesis system stuff. After that the second game was a completely boring grindfest and I gave it up about halfway through, which is not something I generally do these days, at least if I'm not stuck on a difficult part. It wasn't difficult it was just extremely boring, despite having a ton more to do and a lot of new features. The ultimate in open world bloat.

I'd like to add a little twist here too and say that mainstream driving games, in general, have disappointed this generation (though there were some good ones at the beginning of the decade.) The Forza Horizon series is amazing, but Need for Speed has been bad for a long time, Drive Club wasn't good, The Crew wasn't good, and there just doesn't seem to be anyone making mass market driving games right now. Gran Turismo only put out a teaser game for the whole 8th gen! Driving games were amazing during the 7th generation, with a host of classics, but they fell off a cliff hard. There's sim stuff out there for people who like that (Dirt Rally or Project Cars or whatever) but the kinds of games that had mainstream appeal in generations 5-7? Mostly trash outside of Forza. Mister we could use a series like Ridge Racer again!

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fisk0

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#8 fisk0  Moderator

Leaning either Command & Conquer 4 or Destiny. In retrospect I've kinda started seeing what they were going for in C&C 4, and it could have been fine as a spin-off instead of the conclusion of the main story line.

I found just about everything about Destiny straight up vile. Had some enjoyable moments with the loot cave and other times the community found interesting ways to exploit the mechanics, but there was absolutely nothing for me in the parts of the game that worked as intended.

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sombre

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This might be recency bias, but almost definitely DMC5.

They pushed it as this amazing return to form, that was full of badass crazy action.

Then you start the game and have to play as Nero, whose arm thing was tedious, and V, who was straight up boring. I got so bored by that game that I didn't even reach playing as Dante. It's just a shock with how good the reboot of DMC was a few years ago

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bigsocrates

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@fisk0: I wish that everything about Destiny felt straight up vile to me. I would have stopped playing so much sooner and saved myself a lot of wasted time! I actually really liked the shooting. I thought it was very good. And I also thought it was a good looking game.

It was the baffling decisions around the core game that ultimately were so disappointing to me because the game had, IMO, a ton of potential. The fact that all the story was on grimoire cards that for some bizarre reason you couldn't read in game (there's literally no excuse for that, it's only possible to explain as being exploitative.) The lack of in game matchmaking. The fact that engrams could decode to a rarity level lower than the engram itself. These were all just terrible decisions that, for me, wrecked a game whose core I really liked, which is what made it so disappointing for me. It's like someone serving you a wonderful piece of fluffy, moist, perfect cake, and then covering it with rotten apple sauce. It just ruined the whole thing.

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#11 fisk0  Moderator

@bigsocrates: I still ended up finishing the main story missions trying to figure out what people meant by "the shooting feels good", and I just don't get that either.

Even though it had plenty of issues, I genuinely enjoyed the shooting in Defiance much more.

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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I guess I don't get as invested in the potential or promises of AAA games as much as I thought as a lot of the big games listed here don't really rate for me - some series I just never played though like Mass Effect and others I came into in the disappointing entry like Fallout. Yes vanilla Destiny was disappointing but it just doesn't stick in my mind the way smaller games do; despite growing up on Halo.

@bigsocrates: I do agree with Middle Earth in that it was disappointing but still a fine game. That was the winner of the first GOTY I was here for and I was pumped to play it after the talks and I thought the combat was fine and the nemesis system had potential but never went far enough or pushed the player to experiment with it enough. I ended up platinuming that game though because it was easy and some of the late game abilities were fun. I still want to go back to the sequel and see if they got that system to a place I want it, and hearing that they revamped the grind in it since launch makes that more appealing. But it still seems to be a huge game that I don't really have the energy to invest the time in.

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bigsocrates

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@fisk0: I can speak for myself and obviously this won't convince you (nor should it) but what I mean is that the game felt good from moment to moment. Movement felt right. The enemies all had weak spots and responded appropriately when shot in them. The powers were fun to use. Even the platforming was pretty good for first person (the vehicles were pretty horrible though.)

The mechanics felt good. The enemies were well designed and fun to kill.

And then the game took those elements and said "here, go grind this patrol mission and these 4 strikes over and over, and the story is all on a separate website. Toodles."

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piratethingy

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Got to side with Dan here. I did not have fun playing RDR2 and that was terribly disappointing to me.

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Bonbonetti

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#15  Edited By Bonbonetti

Mass Effect 2 (2010).

I loved everything about the first Mass Effect game, ... apart from the occasional crashes and screen freezes (I played on the XBox 360). The game was everything I wanted from a sci-fi RPG: tactical and strategic combat, a huge and diverse open-world to explore, a cool and epic sci-fi storyline, fascinating characters and stories, lots of customization options, and more.

Mass Effect 2 is the exact opposite of what I wanted from a Mass Effect sequel. Gone was the tactical and strategic combat, in favor of simplistic cover-based shooting. Gone was the big open world to explore, replaced by something much smaller and more linear. In the end, the game even punished you for exploring the game-world. Gone was 90% of the customization options, reduced to mediocrity. The 7-samurai theme was poorly written and executed, it lacked any degree of substance and longevity. The only new character I remember from Mass Effect 2 is Miranda, thanks to all the butt-shots of her. And then there's that annoying matching game towards the end of the game.

I was fuming when I finished the game, I broke the disc in two and threw it in the bin. I've never been that angry before at game, and haven't been since. In hindsight it was stupid, I should have just sold the thing and bought something else.

I've been disappointed since, with other games, but this is the one that stung the most because I was really looking forwards to it. The other games that disappointed me were new IPs, I had no prior investment in their franchises.

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liquiddragon

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Personally, the one that comes to mind is Mafia 2. There is probably a better choice but I loved the 1st one and the sequel is an uninspired cover shooter that takes from the most obvious avenues of the gangster genre.

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wollywoo

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Skyward Sword. I had been looking forward to this game forever - I loved the concept of the Wii, if not the execution, and I thought this would finally be the game to elevate the platform to its full potential. When it started getting great reviews (e.g., IGN's 10) I was pretty hyped.

Turns out, the game was not so great in practice. Usually I rate Zelda games on a kind of different scale because I love them so much - but to me, Skyward Sword was the first Zelda game that was not only bad as a Zelda, but a bad game period. There were certainly elements that I liked - like some very cool dungeons - but to me it just failed to give me the sense of exploration that I need in a Zelda. Aside from the sky, which was very minimal and boring compared to other Zelda overworlds like the sea in Wind Waker, virtually every area was plagued with lock-and-key type puzzles that are usually reserved for dungeons. I like dungeon puzzles, but I breathe a sigh of relief when I'm done and I can go back to my favorite part of any Zelda - exploring. Here no sigh of relief comes. As soon as you're done with one dungeon you're dropped into another location that is essentially a dungeon. Now add on top of this the utterly insufferable non-optional tutorializing of every conceivable step in the game, and you have a recipe for total frustration.

Luckily, they followed it up with Breath of the Wild, which had the polar opposite design philosophy.

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Slag

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#18  Edited By Slag

Hmmm well disappointment implies, expecting something to be good and then being let down. Most of what was mentioned already I was aware ahead of time going to be underwhelming before playing it. Honestly I'm generally so well informed in this era thanks to GB etc, that rarely happens anymore

Darkest Dungeon for me

There's so much about that game that really really works (the look, the tone, the level design, etc). So I get why it has such passionate fans and why Alex was so into it and why I was honestly surprised I didn't like it.

The early-mid game insane difficulty spike and sheer volume of recycled content (enemies, environs etc), just really soured me on it. Not to mention the game's systems seem inconsistently balanced. I'm not somebody who really believes in the "games that don't respect my time" argument, but this was definitely a case where I feel it to be true. I'm not interested in spending 80-100+ laborious hours on something that's clearly better off as a 20 hour experience.

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ShaggE

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Duke all day. I was looking forward to that game since 1997, wrote it off multiple times as vaporware (at which point there'd inevitably be new footage or news), knew it wasn't going to be worth the wait but was just excited for a new Duke FPS...

Then the demo dropped, and I had to delude myself. "Oh, demos to great games can suck, happens all the time!"

I even deluded myself into thinking the full game wasn't half bad for a while... then it sank in how truly awful it was. What a massive letdown, only tempered somewhat by the fact that its unusual development and release lead to the game accidentally being an interesting walk through the evolution of shooters between 1997 and 2011. (and the story DLC was actually pretty good, and much more focused on the actual... y'know... part of the genre where you click on enemies until they die)

It was all the more painful after Shadow Warrior of all things got not one but TWO great sequels out of nowhere. Nothing against Shadow Warrior, but that's only slightly less insane than if Redneck Rampage got a revival after DNF and ended up securing GOTY.

On the other hand, I think DOOM '16 came out as incredible as it did because DNF showed how poorly things can go otherwise. I have no evidence supporting that, I just have a suspicion given that the game was meant to be a COD clone for so long.

---

I want to give an honorable mention to No Man's Sky, but I was skeptical from the jump on that one, and it appears to have really come into its own since launch. Other than that... nothing really killed my enthusiasm like Duke did. In a more generally disappointing way, I guess the failed revival of rhythm games was pretty sad as a fan of the genre who still uses his plastic instrument collection. It was just too soon to bring them back, and it made any future revival harder.

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FrodoBaggins

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Destiny. Maybe it's my fault for not following closely enough before launch but what we got and what i thought the game was going to be were two VASTLY different things. Still to this day nobody has done justice to what I imagined Destiny to be.

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Marino

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#21 Marino  Staff

Red Dead Redemption II

I bounced off that game harder than any game I can remember. Ain't got time for that bullshit.

Also...Destiny, Andromeda, Anthem, Fallout 4, Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, Watch Dogs, Star Fox Zero, Skyward Sword, Crackdown 2, Dragon Age II

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Panfoot

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - All the worst sins of the big budget open world games of the last two generations, with very little of what makes Metal Gear great.

Honorable Mentions -
No Man's Sky - I don't care how good it is now, it came out as a $60 dollar bare bones framework of a game, and I say that as someone that bought it after reviews and videos were out and had low expectations.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - I'm just still kinda shocked this got as good of a reception as it did, it had one okay idea and everything else was just so aggressively bland and generic.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs - The Dear Esther guys doing a story with help from the Penumbra/Amnesia guys sounded amazing to me. What we got was a game that stripped out all the mechanics from the first Amnesia and in its stead left a bunch of writing that had the subtility of a brick being thrown through a window.

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fisk0

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#23 fisk0  Moderator

Fuck, I just remembered Landmark. Such a massive disappointment on multiple levels - it was meant to be the EverQuest Next construction kit, or a voxel based Minecraft, but both Landmark and EQN were cancelled and not only that, even the singleplayer/offline component was disabled for anybody who had picked it up. I never even got to really experience the game since it ran like shit on the PC I bought it for originally, and then was shut down just in time for my PC upgrade.

That game essentially was the last drop for me when it came to purchasing always online/"games as a service" titles.

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Captain_Insano

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This page had reminded me of a couple.

Simcity is definitely right up there

Mafia 2 was also super bland after the first game, though I thought Mafia 3 was fine (great opening, too bad the whole game didn't sustain it).

No no Kuni 2 really bored me and i had loved the first game.

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Captain_Insano

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This page had reminded me of a couple.

Simcity is definitely right up there

Mafia 2 was also super bland after the first game, though I thought Mafia 3 was fine (great opening, too bad the whole game didn't sustain it).

No no Kuni 2 really bored me and i had loved the first game.

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Marino

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#26  Edited By Marino  Staff

@fisk0: Yeah, I didn't think about cancelled games. But, I was cautiously optimistic about EQN after they finally unveiled it in 2013 after 4 years of teasing it. But, when they basically had nothing new to show at SOE Live the next year, I knew it wasn't a good sign. Then it took them another year and a half to actually cancel it. Ugh.

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devise22

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I'm going to add my chorus to the Destiny/Destiny 2 thoughts here. The pitch and promise of Destiny heading into this console generation was going to be "my game." I had bounced off a lot of MMO's, I loved shooters and the first few hours I put into that thing I absolutely loved the way it felt. But then it never really became an MMO. Always this, hybrid expansion pass sort of DLC oh wait we made a sequel bullshit. I wanted what WoW is but with a space shooter. The fact that after years of updates and changes Warframe (a free to play game) is far more closer to the promise or pitch of original Destiny is wild to me.

Also. I'm here to do some defending for Mass Effect Andromeda. While I wouldn't go as far to call it a "good" game, the hyperbole that gets used around it (in this thread even, which given the nature of the title that is fair) is crazy to me. Even when it was more buggy at launch. It's a middling game don't get me wrong. But it had some good mechanical ideas that if better utilized could of made for a good game. In general there was enough in Andromeda that with more creative time and development time, something good could of been there. So with that I don't understand how is it so bad it killed the franchise? It's a silly meme for this site true, but I still say Mass Effect will be back and it'll be fine. Worst series with worst entries than Andromeda have found second life years down the road and considering the amount of fan support for that universe, yeah that franchise will be just fine. FFS Capcom brought back Resident Evil and made it good. Anything is possible.

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Casepb

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^ I agree with ME:Andromeda. While I was definitely disappointed by it, I didn't hate the game, and it also still gave me that ME vibe so I was content for what it was.

I think I'm going to vote for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I also want to mention No Man's Sky. Both of these games I was super hyped up for, more so BOTW because I've always loved Zelda games, and it just didn't feel like a Zelda game to me. I was so incredibly disappointed by the dungeons and boss fights. And with NMS I guess I just got tricked into believing that first trailed they showed off. I ended up barely playing it.

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KTipcorn

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#29  Edited By KTipcorn

Mass Effect 2 (2010).

I loved everything about the first Mass Effect game, ...

Mass Effect 2 is the exact opposite of what I wanted from a Mass Effect sequel. Gone was the tactical and strategic combat, in favor of simplistic cover-based shooting. Gone was the big open world to explore, replaced by something much smaller and more linear. In the end, the game even punished you for exploring the game-world. Gone was 90% of the customization options, reduced to mediocrity.

This was the honest answer I didn't want to give.

In a way ME was the best games series for me, but each iteration had the interesting edges beaten out and scope narrowed.

ME:A to me fit perfectly in the trajectory the series was taking so it just wasn't that disappointing, despite being the worst in the series.

ME2 was an amazing game, but the narrowing of possibilities from 1 due to the realities of the market is a big part of why I was dumb enough to let Chris Roberts to mug me in 2014. If we're accepting dumb naive illusions being shattered as 'disappointment', the Roberts scam is my second nomination.

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Bonbonetti

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@ktipcorn:

I did think ME2 was a big improvement over the first game when it came to the technical stuff, like graphics and performance. It also had a really nice and memorable soundtrack. However, those are the only positive things I can say about the game. It was definitely made for a more mainstream audience, and must have been a huge financial success for them.

ME3 felt like an attempt to appease people like you and me, who liked the first game the most. I didn't play ME3 personally, I just watched a playthrough. I would have enjoyed playing it more than ME2 for sure, I thought the story was more interesting and the game design closer aligned with the original game, but I had more or less given up on the franchise.

Andromeda felt like a fresh start and I did actually enjoy the game at first, the initial 20 hours or so. Then however, more and more issues started popping up; technical issues like glitches and extreme framerate drops, bugs that wouldn't allow me to finish side-missions, dialogue or voiceover issues, fetch quest after fetch quest across multiple systems, and no proper ending I felt. I still think the concept behind it is good, but the game needed more time in development, it felt increasingly rushed once you got past the first 20 hours or so.

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Bonbonetti

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@hobozero:

I bought Aliens: Colonial Marines for €7 and played it like Doom, ... and I actually enjoyed it that way. Is it a €50 or even a €20 game? no, of-course not. Does it feel like I'm in an Alien movie? only to some extent. However I can't deny enjoying the thing enough to play through it, twice even. I did enjoy the combat, the feel and sound of the weapons, and it had enough of the Alien atmosphere to support what I was looking for. But again, the game was still a fiasco, there's just no way around that.

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Bonbonetti

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#32  Edited By Bonbonetti

@bigsocrates:

Regarding, the Middle-Earth games. I could not understand the first game winning GOTY on so many sites. The combat and gameplay mechanics were very solid to me, but the environments all looked the same, the same muddy pits and hills. It just wasn't a very exciting game to look at and the game-world, if you can even call it that, was not that fun to explore because there was not enough interesting things in it. The Nemesis system didn't really matter much in my opinion, and I felt no incentive to choose one chief over another. I didn't think it really mattered for the end-game. The ending left me annoyed: the game hinted at an epic final battle, but all I got was 30-40 orcs slugging it out, hardly an epic battle. I expected some Total War stuff, from the in-game hype of "building your rebellion army".

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MagnetPhonics

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#33  Edited By MagnetPhonics

Godus anyone?

For my personal circumstances that don't necessarily reflect on the games quality: Hitman 2 (broken control rebinding on PC ruined the game for me), Videoball (unplayable) and Outer Wilds (save game deleted by what I now know to be a known bug)

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I'd really need a personal list of all the games I've played throughout the decade to see all the potential candidates, but putting one up is either impossible or way too time-consuming.

So going by just what pops first into my memory, I think Hotline Miami 2 takes the prize. I looooved the first game and the sequel gradually grew worse as I played it, with a couple of exceptions.

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soulcake

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I don't wanna be that guy but doesn't the new decade start in 2021? Also C&C4 killed what was left of the already small AAA RTS scené. Rip AAA RTS's

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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@soulcake: not sure what is technically correct, but either way everyone has been treating this as the new decade. New number up front new decade?

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BallsLeon

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The Order: 1886 The trailer for this game really impressed me. The graphics were amazing to me, the combat looked dynamic, and it looked like you would have a lot of "weird" weapons to experiment with.

What it ended up being was a completely boring pile of crap. The least dynamic cover shooter gameplay, combined with 3-4 weapon options throughout the entire game, cringe-inducing QTE "boss" battles, and possibly one of the most frustrating stealth missions ever. This game SUCKS!

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Shindig

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I think Star Citizen wins this. It is no longer a game you could conceivably see on a storefront or shelf. At best, it's a platform for Star Citizen's 'work in progress assets'. If Roberts ever had a plan for what he wanted Star Citizen 1.0 to be, they're long gone.

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jamesyfx

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From what I can recall.. my personal choice would be Brink.

I had no idea what to expect when I bought it. It looked super promising when I first started it.. but it ended up being pretty dull and repetitive.

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bigsocrates

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#40  Edited By bigsocrates

@shindig: From what I can tell Roberts wanted Star Citizen 1.0 to be a way for him to fund a development studio so it worked out pretty nicely.

In terms of producing a game for people to actually play...I suppose that could happen eventually but as of now it's just bits and pieces and a steady stream of promises.

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GenericBrotagonist

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Kingdom Hearts 3, Metal Gear Solid V, and Zero Time Dilemma were all huge build ups with lack luster payoff. KH3 tied everything up with a bow in the most boring and predictable way possible, although I do think what it set up next seems interesting. We'll never know what truly happened with MGSV, but it seems like just a pointless mess. Nothing happened, the twist was figured out a year before the game came out, and it didn't even bother with it's main conceit of showing Big Boss's final descent to evil. ZTD suffered from almost not getting made due to previous low sales, to the point they had to abandon the finer points of it's plot to hopefully bring in new players. It ended up not really doing that at all while also pissing off the people who wanted to see that stuff resolved.

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hack1501

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I have to say it is Assassins Creed 3. I am a history buff that loves American history and had loved the Assassins Creed series up to that point. So needless to say I was super excited about AC3. I wasn't even turned off by the long intro because I was so excited. It turned out the only thing good to come out of that game was the ship combat. At least it helped to make Assassins Creed Black Flag my new favorite.

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wmoyer83

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#43  Edited By wmoyer83

Not a game, but the Kinect was certaintly hyped and over misrepresented. I still feel there could have been more clever ways to incorporate it into playing games, but it just fell flat. I had fun with it, but overall it was a massively disappointing platform.

Most disappointing cancellation has to be Scalebound by leaps and bounds (no pun intended). Microsoft was bone dry with exclusives and this was something that I think a lot of people were looking for, and they just did not come through. The latest rumor is the project is being retooled for the Switch of all things so I guess we shall see if this thing takes off.

Most disappointing release hands down has to be Mighty No. 9. With the announcement of Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe earlier in the decade I remember being really excited for these games, and Capcom flushed them for whatever reason. When Keiji Inafune dropped his Kickstarter campaign all of those broken hearts immediately latched onto this game and gave everyone hope for something that can give us the Mega Man game we wanted. Then the drama, delays, and mismanagement created a lot of friction between the project and its backers. When the game was finally released it was a hot turd. Was it worth the wait? Nope! Did it fill the void left by Capcom? Nope! Will it forever clutter bargain bins and Gamestop used Wii U sections for the rest of our lives? Yep!

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Stephen_Von_Cloud

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@bonbonetti: I feel just like you do about ME 2 except that I still have to say it's a solid game. But not much more because of all that was lost that you lay out and the terrible overall storyline.

ME 1 is the best game in the series because of the scale and the strong main storyline and it is a shame that wasn't refined more in that style to me as well

As far as ME 3, it's an improvement from 2 and dials back the extreme level of streamlining with the gameplay and those aspects for sure. But it's not 1. The nice thing about 1 though is it does pretty well to stand alone, especially because it has real wild stuff like a villain (lol).

So I feel I can't agree.... but reading your post and thinking of how they changed the Citadel into a hallway does start to get me angry all over again.

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Nodima

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#45  Edited By Nodima

I could whip together a TL;DR off all the reasons why I think Mass Effect: Andromeda was a perfectly fine game in spite of itself, but I already blogged about that earlier this year. Suffice it to say, tempered expectations, Bioware ironing out a lot of the worst technical flaws and being one of the people who was already let down by Mass Effect 3's kitchen sink storytelling helped me mostly enjoy that game for what it was.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is honestly a strong contender. I waited until the run-up to New Colossus to give it a go, and found a game with a decent if shambling story tacked onto a stealth shooter with terrible stealth mechanics and level designs that left the player in a state of constant confusion about where to go next. Almost every scenario was bold or unique in some fashion, but this game just couldn't stop getting in its own way. And the final boss is possibly the worst designed boss in a big budget, AAA, story-driven game since, I don't know, Uncharted 2's General Who-Gives-a-Shit?

I thought Firewatch was going to be the jam, even though I hadn't really played most walking sim titles to that point, but even my non-gaming girlfriend at the time said halfway through that she'd rather watch me read potion recipes in The Witcher. I suppose I can't say I expected the game to be great, but boy did I not get what I thought I would out of this one.

My last pair of honorable mentions are a pair of games that are listed among the very greatest games of all time by those who were lucky enough to click with them. The Witness is a lovely idea and a haunting world, but me and the puzzle-loving, non-gaming then-girlfriend gave this one a real honest shot and just fucking withered from it in short order. If we played this game for even 5 hours total I'd be surprised.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, meanwhile, presented me with six hours of a game that was shaping up to be perhaps my favorite game of the generation. The generic enemy combat was super fun on its own, the traversal felt great, and the bosses while a different kind of challenge gave me the same exhilaration I'd gotten from Bloodborne once I finally clicked with that game and obsessed over it for a full summer. Then came, as I've said probably thirty times in different capacities, the circle of death known as Lady Butterfly, Genichiro, Seven Spears, Snake Eyes, The Lone Shadow Longswordsman (who, I confess, I did eventually beat one of the three times I reinstalled that game desperate to get good after watching a stream) and Ashina Elite. I have spent between three and ten hours with each of these bosses. I know all their tells, I know what makes them angry, happy, sad, horny, excitable, depressed. And they all know how to kill me before I can kill them. Each of them scored a special place in my heart, and if I never see them again I'll be the happiest boy on the planet.

I liked the early game enough that I've still placed Sekiro 9th on my Game of the Year ballot, but never have I cooled on a game so thoroughly as I did that one.

Anyway, my actual most disappointing is the NBA 2K series. My favorite sport, my favorite casual conversation piece, and something I logged countless hours in franchise and online gameplay year after year since Two Thousand and Four. And that's the problem. Basketball has changed so much in the past five years, but 2K still plays like its Dreamcast/PS2 origins, so it no longer fully resembles real basketball. All the series' resources have gone to MyPlayer, a mode I've never cared for, and MyTeam, a mode that should be my very favorite thing in all of video games but instead plays like the most predatory carnival barker sideshow experience you can find without leaving your home. The release date of NBA 2K used to be akin to a holiday for me, but I didn't buy NBA 2K19 until they suckered me with a $2.99 price point on PSN after the Finals; even at $3, I barely got through a handful of games before uninstalling it. NBA 2K20 is the first installment I straight up haven't bought since the earliest days of the franchise, and I see no reason why 2K21 will change my mind as there's simply no way it'll be able to provide the graphical "wow" factor the upgrade from 2K13 on PS3 to 2K14 on PS4 did.

Mass Effect: Andromeda may be the most famous example of a franchise killing release in this generation for most, but the stretch of NBA 2K17/18/19 for me was like witnessing the killing of a sacred animal while tied to a chair.

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breardon2011

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#46  Edited By breardon2011

@fisk0:

I know, after that first "we're making a ten year game" and then like just garbage, and they never deliver on it. The shooting was nice, like its in some ways a travesty it went the way it did but yeah I still haven't played Destiny 2 because I just felt so burned, and they never even addressed that. I'm not easily made bitter but yeah Destiny did it lol.

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hermes

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God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 were both huge disappointments to me. Not only they are subpar experiences in terms of characters compared to their predecessors, but they were the reason why I decided to go for PS3 over 360 on that generation. It got better by the end of the generation, but that was not a good choice at the beginning.

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Stephen_Von_Cloud

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@nodima: oh man... you're NBA 2K choice is brilliant and I hadn't thought of it. I'm someone who used to put, since almost 08 or so, at least 200 hours a year or so into NBA 2K and I now haven't bought or played the last two years games at all. That series has been a huge fucking bummer unfortunately and it's a great call.

One thing that's worse even then you suggest is how yeah resources have say gone into myplayer but it still has the same problems or even brand new ones every year and there are never responses to the issues and criticism. One example is the way you level up stats in that, which actually has the same shitty stat bundling problem (ie how you can't say be really good at blocking shots but not steals or how you can't be a great offensive rebounder and not defensive one) that Outer Worlds has where the game refuses to allow you to have freedom in a fucking RPG to build your character how you actually want. Insanely stupid decision to force on people.

I don't know if it will ever get back on track either. Signs aren't good.

The fact that it slipped my mind really says it all.

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Stephen_Von_Cloud

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@panfoot said:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - All the worst sins of the big budget open world games of the last two generations, with very little of what makes Metal Gear great.

we must have insanely different ideas of sins of big budget open world games.

If there's anything to criticize MGSV for there it's that it isnt truly an open world game like basically any other one out there... which turns out was actually hugely refreshing over another boring Ubisoft style checklist open world game. To me it fit open world and a mission based type structure together pretty well.

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Ginormous76

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#50  Edited By Ginormous76

My Most Disappointing Games of the Decade:

Before I begin, I want to make a note on how I describe "disappointing." Disappointing to me is something that I was really looking forward to and just disappointed me. So, a game like Fallout 76 doesn't even crack this list, because as soon as it was announced I had no interest based on the description. What they released was exactly what I expected them to release.

Honorable Mention: Doom Just didn't enjoy it. I can see why some loved it, not for me. Got it fairly cheap, loved Doom 1 & 2.

Honorable Metion: Kingdom Hearts 3. I assumed that a game coming out late in the PS4 life cycle would not just be a PS2 game. I also assumed that my love for Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2 would carry me through KH3. I gave up after two hours of frustration with problems that were solved a decade or more ago. This only gets an HM, because I at least tempered my expectations.

Runner-Up: Bioshock Infinite. After an great debut with Bioshock and a great follow-up with Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite was just crap. They got up their own butt trying to be clever and it was just so boring. I found myself just pushing through because people were saying how great the story was and the ending. Funny though, that now people rag on this game, but when it launched I was one of the few people I knew/saw online that saw it for what it was.

Runner-Up: Dark Souls 2. I picked up Dark Souls 1 in 2012 after hearing how great and difficult it was. Got to the first boss and died over and over and over. I kept trying because it was a "hard" game. Gave up thinking it was too hard. Cut to 2014 when I started watching Let's Plays on Youtube. I figured I would watch someone play through Dark Souls since I never could. Saw them ignore the first boss and run through a side path and did a face palm. Immediately stopped watching and started Dark Souls again. Played through it (and outside of some frustrating places like the ledge of Anor Londo and O&S) I loved it. Now, maybe it's because I picked up DS2 almost immediately after a second playthrough of DS1, but I just did not like DS2.

Runner-Ups: Halo 4 & 5: Ok, so Halo 5 is on me as I bought back into the hype after Halo 4 and also failed to do research. Even with tempered expectations though it disappointed. I loved Halo 1-3. Playing single player, I played through the campaign on Legendary on all of them. I also played ODST and Reach. Halo 4 was either just too much Halo or just no longer fun. Was really disappointed. When Halo 5 was announced and shown off, I got hyped again. So hyped, that I bought an Xbox One S (previously just had PS4) and Halo 5. Part of it though, was that Master Chief Collection came free with the console and at the time Gamestop let me get two more free Xbone games for buying the console. I was looking forward to playing through Halo 5 with my wife... yeah... stupid me... Who would have guessed that a main feature of the previous 6 Halo games would be stripped out? Thankfully, MCC was there for the rescue and was a lot of fun to replay with my wife.

Winner: Fallout 4. Oh... em... gee... I did multiple full playthroughs of the game and DLCs of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (again, another game where the popular opinion has flipped to my original opinion). I LOVED these games. I LOVED testing different builds of the characters. I LOVED the companions. Just about everything about these games excited me and interested me. I even created what I call "poverty" or "scavenger" runs, where I would never sell anything and only use what I found on the ground. I would ditch weapons if I ran out of ammo and wasn't finding any. I would run around punching people if needed. I just had to keep playing these games. So, when Fallout 4 was announced, I was STOKED. Everything they showed just screamed like it was going to be another great entry with some more ideas. Boy, was I wrong. It was just bland. It just had none of that charm. The characters were blah, the locations were blah, the perks were blah. It was like they took the "blandness" of the brown landscapes from FO3 & FONV, added colors, but needed to have something be bland so everything else was bland. I can only imagine how I felt about FO4 was exactly how Dan felt about RDR2.