Friday Five – Most Disappointing Games

---

 
Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week we help you get to know our writers with the help of a top 5 list! This weeks category: Most Disappointing Games.
 
Ah, the hype machine. Bringer of dreams, destroyer of hearts. It seems like every year we’re talking about the scope or scale of some new game. And with it, every year, we’re talking about how said game(s) didn’t live up to the hype. Some exceed expectations, but others… disappoint.
 

Chris

1. Final Fantasy XII – It’s not so much that Final Fantasy XII was a bad game, it just wasn’t the game that I wanted to play. I only managed to get a handful of hours in before I just wasn’t enjoying myself at all anymore and stopped. What they tried to do with the battle system was a nice idea, but it ultimately didn’t work, until apparently far later in the game when you have unlocked a lot of variations. Luckily they refined this for Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 which in my opinion did a lot better. While XIII was the better of the two, XIII-2 had the better battle system. Unfortunately that still leaves XII as a forgettable titled for me.
2. ZombiU – This was one of the first two games I purchased with my Wii U on launch. The other was New Super Mario Bros which is fantastic. Unfortunately ZombiU missed that boat. The controls weren’t great, the premise wasn’t all that interesting, and the multiplayer only allowed for two people and really wasn’t anything special.
3. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Assassin’s Creed III was bad, but IV was a straight up disappointment. The series had been a lot of fun up until III. The first game and Revelations were probably the worst two up to that point, and they were still good games. III was just a giant mess, and then Black Flag came out, and I thought “Okay I’ll give the series another go, even though I hate the boat missions” I got it for PS4 because I had nothing else for it at that point, and I could only stomach like 3 hours of it before I turned it off and haven’t gone back. It’s nothing but following people and trying not to get caught, and I’m sorry but that isn’t not a good time.
4. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced – Final Fantasy Tactics was an amazing game, everything about it made you want to keep playing it over and over. So you’d think that a sequel to it would be just as awesome. Unfortunately the GBA sequel Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced fell a bit short. It’s not a bad game, and it’s still a solid play, but compared to the epic story and all the customization and strategy of the first game it’s basically nothing. The addition of the judges were cool, and annoying. I can remember at times either having to look away and missing the ‘Rule’ of the matches, or just not understanding what they were talking about.
5. Diablo III – I know Diablo III apparently improved greatly with it’s recently expansion Reaper of Souls, and I’m not saying it was a bad game before that. I actually really enjoyed Diablo III for my first play through. It just didn’t have that certain something that made you want to keep going over and over again like Diablo II had. Unless you were Eric then you maxed out the level of every class just because.

 

 

Vogel

1. Terraria – I really enjoy Minecraft and kept seeing people talk about it, but I don’t think it lived up to the hype.
2. Walking Dead: Survival Instinct – I read the books and watch the show, so a fps zombie survival game in the Walking Dead universe should have been awesome. Best I can gather, it was rushed for the initial purchases and didn’t care about quality.
3. Zombie U – this game had a lot of potential, the multiplayer was a lot of fun. But with the buggy controls and the fact that multiplayer was 2 player only (would liked to have seen 5 player or a co op) the game fell flat.
4. Sim City – at first I really liked it. I didn’t have the server connection problems people were having and very rarely couldn’t play when I wanted to. Then I started playing with my wife and the server problems got worse. We work on a big project like the solar farm and our games would show different stages or it would not show at all after it already had. I played this game, I feel, for as long as I could though and I had fun, I was just disappointed.
5. Twilight Princess – I loved most of the early LoZ games, and I didn’t play OoT until Windwaker came out for Game Cube (preorder bonus). When I tried to play Twilight Princess I just couldn’t get into it. I was just disappointed with it for no real reason.

 

 

Drootin

1. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced – Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time so when a new game in the franchise was announced it forced me to buy a GBA. Then I played the game… the game didn’t have the depth that the original had since not every character could unlock every job. The story was much more childish I guess, it just wasn’t the original game and that was sad.
2. Final Fantasy XII – This game played like an MMO with REALLY stupid teammates. I just couldn’t enjoy it they way I had 7, 8, 10, and 11.
3. Watch Dogs – My most recent disappointment, while the game didn’t have any major flaws it felt too much like GTA and I just couldn’t get into it. If you’re a GTA fan you’d enjoy the game, but as a non-fan of that franchise, the game just didn’t do it for me.
4. Madden NFL 2007 (PS3) – The PS3 version of Madden ‘07 was awful. It was missing so many of the features that the PS2 version had (franchise mode, co-op play being the 2 most glaring omissions that my brother and I were missing).
5. Any PS2 Era EA NHL Game – My love for EA Sports NHL ‘94 is well documented on this site and in our podcasts, and I also like a lot of their NHL games up to NHL ‘99 but the PS2 era games just never felt right. I don’t know if it was that I was starting to look for a more realistic game and they still played too fast or if it was some of the gimmicks they put in like the “Hero” line but I just never really enjoyed or owned any of the PS2 era NHL games.

 

 

Audra

1. Perfect Dark – I had so much fun playing multiplayer Golden Eye so I pre-ordered this game for my N64 (my first pre-order). However, when I got the game, it just didn’t hold the same luster.
2. Eragon – Received this game as a gift. Thanks Walnuts for thinking of me, but as it turns out games created from movies, not so good. I’m pretty sure I got stuck in a wall.
3. Majora’s Mask – It’s not the worst game, but greatly disliked being under a time crunch at every moment. Plus I had just come off of playing Ocarina of Time and had high expectations.
4. Raving Rabbids TV Party – I was in love with the first Wii Rayman Raving Rabbids game, that of course I wanted the portable version. But it just didn’t hold a candle to the Wii version.
5. The Sims Pets – The game was fun, but I just couldn’t get past the controls. I was used to the original Sims controls for moving across the screen but I couldn’t figure out how to switch the controls around in Pets.

 

 

Eric

It looks like I have a love/hate relationship with fantasy games…

1. Dragon Age II – I could not get enough of Dragon Age: Origins! I played it multiple times, platinum trophy, all the DLC, everything! So, I was of course super excited for Dragon Age II! The problem here is that Dragon Age II wasn’t a bad game. Not really, anyway. It just wasn’t a natural progression for Dragon Age as a series. It took away the whole tactical feel, that FFXII and Baldurs Gate had before it, and instead went for more of a generic style action game. You literally spammed combat abilities until the enemy died, and sometime that was far too long. There was no strategy. On top of that there were only about 10 different maps to explore, all very small. Your party couldn’t be customized in almost anyway, most wearing the same armor and using the same weapons from the moment you meet them until the end. It just didn’t feel as grand as DA:O did. The story was still excellent, and DA:Inquisition looks great! So it wasn’t bad, just disappointing.
2. Final Fantasy VIII-2 – Horrible fucking game. XIII was splendid albeit diluted from the rest of the series. The lack of strategy, and no emphasis on exploration until nearly 20 hours into the game hurt it. Those aspects of the game were fixed in it’s sequel, however it also came with a campy plot, with horribly boring characters. The Voice acting and writing were horrendous to the point that I played with the volume off and read subtitles. Just… not fun.
3. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings – I really liked Final Fantasy XII. It felt far less MMO-y to me then it did my peers. Instead it felt more like a classic American style RPG akin to Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights, with the whole Final Fantasy style added to it. Some of the cast was annoying, Vaan and Pannello weren’t actually planned to be in the game until later stages of development. It’s story was much darker than most, and the combat was super customizable. However, Revenant Wings took everything good and threw it away in favor of a pseudo-RTS style game. All you needed to do was build enough of the strongest units and you insta-win the map. Super boring, and it came from such a great game!
4. Assassin’s Creed III – Every game up to this point ranged from really good to ok. However 3 was just downright disappointing. Nothing about it was fun, at all. It was buggy, the characters were boring, and the ending just left me questioning why the game had to happen at all. Very poor effort.
5. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days – Yeah, this game was bad, and it hurt so much because I loved everything about all of the game before it! It took the game out of it’s open-ish exploration setup and opted for a more mobile friendly mission format. Sadly, it just didn’t feel natural. 10 minutes in a mission, then back to the hub and go again. It just wasn’t exciting. The characters were also a major snorefest. Luckily Birth By Sleep was worlds better than any other KH game to date, so it made up for the blandness of 358/2 Days.

 

 

Eric is not a boss. You can Email Eric or follow Eric on Twitter @EricSweeten or Facebook

Comments are closed.