Which game release was the biggest letdown?

[killamch89]

18 hours ago, Kane99 said:

Yeah it was a game I was hyped for too, but when I played the first 20 minutes or so I wasn't sold. It didn't help that the copy I got kept freezing up, but once I got a replacement copy it worked fine. I played it for as long as I could, which was longer than I expected. But it didn't give me much to play for. I don't think it had a story mode, or championship mode. But it's been so long since I played, I may be wrong on that. 

Backstage Assault was the worst of them though, because it was pretty much the same exact game with its controls, graphics, etc, but just being backstage. 

That was also my issue with it - it felt like any other WCW game at the time but with one setting.

[Kane99]

On 3/9/2023 at 1:04 PM, killamch89 said:

That was also my issue with it - it felt like any other WCW game at the time but with one setting.

Yeah, it felt like it went backwards. My thought was that it would have you wrestle in arenas as usual, but you could take the battle backstage. But when I saw it was set only back stage I was like nah. 

But to be fair, the Mayhem game was far superior to the earlier games like WCW Nitro & WCW/nwO Thunder on the PS1. Those games were even worse. Thankfully the N64 faired better with WCW/nWo Revenge and WCW Vs nWo World Tour. 

[HowHammerYou]

For me it was Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. From a gameplay standpoint the game is great, it has tons of features and plays like a dream. But the story, the thing people play the Metal gear series for and the thing this game was supposed to tie together and send off with a bang? The story was an absolute dumpster fire. Now to be fair, each game in the series has some off-the-wall story elements in it, but they were never on the level of "people can pull full-sized battle rifles out of the palms of their hands because they found rare skin parasites that let them do that." The sheer amount of character assassination they did to Big Boss, who at the time was one of my favorite fictional characters, also really turned my stomach.

Not only do I regret ever playing the game, it was also one of the major factors that persuaded me to no longer buy Collector's Editions or pre-order games. Getting burned a second time next year by Square Enix's half-finished Final Fantasy XV put the final nail in that coffin.

Dishonorable Mentions: Final Fantasy XV, Zelda: BoTW, Fallout 4.

[Reality vs Adventure]

 

6 hours ago, HowHammerYou said:

Not only do I regret ever playing the game, it was also one of the major factors that persuaded me to no longer buy Collector's Editions or pre-order games. Getting burned a second time next year by Square Enix's half-finished Final Fantasy XV put the final nail in that coffin.

Dishonorable Mentions: Final Fantasy XV, Zelda: BoTW, Fallout 4.

What happened with FF15? You got burned from preordering and got a bunch of bugs? I'm haven't a good ol time playing the game. I just started playing so maybe I'm jumping the gun. What are your expectations? 

[HowHammerYou]

2 hours ago, Reality vs Adventure said:

 

What happened with FF15? You got burned from preordering and got a bunch of bugs? I'm haven't a good ol time playing the game. I just started playing so maybe I'm jumping the gun. What are your expectations? 

To its credit, the half of the game that they finished is damn good. I was having a blast playing it until about the halfway point. Then right after the big fight with Leviathan, the second half begins and it becomes very obvious that they ran out of development time. The game develops a very on-rails feel to it (sometimes literally) and starts racing through new areas and plot points at lightning speed. Then it got really good again right at the end... except the fans didn't like the old ending because everyone died, so Square wussed out and wrote a completely different ending which was patched in and changed the story.

At first I thought it was no big deal and that they would patch in the stuff that was missing from the second half of the game. They did for some things, but the trouble is they paywalled it behind paid DLC. Then they spent years making a fishing sim and other pointless stuff nobody asked for instead of just finishing the second half.

[killamch89]

On 3/17/2023 at 12:52 AM, HowHammerYou said:

To its credit, the half of the game that they finished is damn good. I was having a blast playing it until about the halfway point. Then right after the big fight with Leviathan, the second half begins and it becomes very obvious that they ran out of development time. The game develops a very on-rails feel to it (sometimes literally) and starts racing through new areas and plot points at lightning speed. Then it got really good again right at the end... except the fans didn't like the old ending because everyone died, so Square wussed out and wrote a completely different ending which was patched in and changed the story.

At first I thought it was no big deal and that they would patch in the stuff that was missing from the second half of the game. They did for some things, but the trouble is they paywalled it behind paid DLC. Then they spent years making a fishing sim and other pointless stuff nobody asked for instead of just finishing the second half.

Square Enix has been poor in terms of game releases for the past decade, I think I can name 2 or 3 games that were good but the rest have all been massive disappointments and I agree with you about FF XV. I was also not a huge fan of the changes they made to most of the summons. Bahamut in particular was always a dragon so I couldn't understand why they turned him into some Dragon Swordsman. Like wth?

[Ravenfreak]

For me it's definitely Mighty No. 9. I had hoped this would indeed be an amazing Mega Man successor, since at the time the game was announced Capcom had stopped making Mega Man titles. I backed the project and even made a community that was open to everyone, not just the backers of the project and it was created before the official forums were launched. The project was doing well until Keiji Inafune started getting ideas of making an animated series based on the game, and wasting money towards that goal rather than just focusing on the game...

[killamch89]

On 4/7/2023 at 10:24 PM, Ravenfreak said:

For me it's definitely Mighty No. 9. I had hoped this would indeed be an amazing Mega Man successor, since at the time the game was announced Capcom had stopped making Mega Man titles. I backed the project and even made a community that was open to everyone, not just the backers of the project and it was created before the official forums were launched. The project was doing well until Keiji Inafune started getting ideas of making an animated series based on the game, and wasting money towards that goal rather than just focusing on the game...

The decision makers in most videogame companies seem to lack the basic ability to "read the room" and it always ends up destroying many promising projects. I love Megaman games and I'd honestly like it if Capcom made another one.

[Anders]

Does it count as a letdown if I never actually played the game? Many years ago now, I saw an early trailer for a game a new game that was coming out. It looked absolutely awesome. It had an open world, and was focused around a motorcycle gang. You were supposed to be able to customize your bike, and earn respect and work your way up in the gang. At the time, my favorite TV-show was Sons of Anarchy, so this game was right up my alley.

Time went on, and I didn't really follow the progress of the game until I suddenly saw that it was coming out in a few weeks. On release day I went to my local game store, but sadly that hadn't gotten it it. I think I ended up buying something else that day, but I can't quite remember.

That game was little game called Ride To Hell: Retribution, and it's probably one of the worst games ever made. As I said, I've never actually played it myself, but I've seen enough gameplay to know that it's an absolute clown show. I guess at some point in the development process they ran out of money or something and scrapped the whole open world game that I had been excited for, and instead cobbled together the absolute mess of a game they ended up releasing instead. I guess I really dodged a bullet that day.

[killamch89]

2 hours ago, Anders said:

Does it count as a letdown if I never actually played the game? Many years ago now, I saw an early trailer for a game a new game that was coming out. It looked absolutely awesome. It had an open world, and was focused around a motorcycle gang. You were supposed to be able to customize your bike, and earn respect and work your way up in the gang. At the time, my favorite TV-show was Sons of Anarchy, so this game was right up my alley.

Time went on, and I didn't really follow the progress of the game until I suddenly saw that it was coming out in a few weeks. On release day I went to my local game store, but sadly that hadn't gotten it it. I think I ended up buying something else that day, but I can't quite remember.

That game was little game called Ride To Hell: Retribution, and it's probably one of the worst games ever made. As I said, I've never actually played it myself, but I've seen enough gameplay to know that it's an absolute clown show. I guess at some point in the development process they ran out of money or something and scrapped the whole open world game that I had been excited for, and instead cobbled together the absolute mess of a game they ended up releasing instead. I guess I really dodged a bullet that day.

Definitely - I know of quite a few games like that where I was going to pre-order them and I instead chose to wait until after release when the reviews came out to make my decision and it has saved me tons of money and from a lot of disappointment.

[NightmareFarm]

Horizon Forbidden West maybe? Probably not it's hard to answer "for all time" but this was a very big recent letdown.

 

 

Plot is decent but very lackluster compared to ZD. I don't like how half of the main plot just feels like side quests unlike the more focused narrative of ZD. The actual conflicts in the forbidden west between the different tribes should have played a more prominent role. Gameplay feels like a step backwards with some of the changes they made. Machines feel overly spongey. Heavy attacks feel weightless now and you have to hold charge to get knockdowns. The "super modes" do more harm than good, I don't like that it slows the pace of the gameplay down and it doesn't feel fitting for this type of game. You also have to change them in the main menu which gets tedious. I didn't like the new weapons, besides maybe the elemental boltblaster. I didn't really like the changes to crafting either that made it more restrictive. Graphics hardly look different(this game should have been PS5 exclusive). I do like how you get the option to play in 60fps though.

I feel like ZD just went way too hard for a first entry and as a result the sequel couldn't really do anything to improve on it as a result.

[Debashis]

Fallout 76. It was hyped up so much, but the game was riddled with bugs, lacked engaging quests, and the multiplayer aspect felt forced. It was a letdown for fans of the Fallout series, myself included.

Edited January 15 by Debashis

[Kennysplash]

Definitely Hogwarts legacy. The HP universes was something else, lots of stuttering and framerate drops. I find it repetitive too, the innovations are quite low. 

[Shagger]

2 hours ago, Kennysplash said:

Definitely . The HP universes was something else, lots of stuttering and framerate drops. I find it repetitive too, the innovations are quite low. 

 

The general concensus as far as I know ia was that Hogwarts legacy was pretty stable at launch. I didn't hear any horror stories and the game worked perfectly fine for me, and I'm not using a powerful PC either.

[Heatman]

For a recent game, I would have to say Kingdom Hearts 3. We the fans waited so long for it and it fell flat in a lot of places. Also, I'm very sure that almost everyone who played Cybertruck 2077 can't forget what went down with the game.