The biggest disappointments in your personal gaming history

[SixDead]

I'd say Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Well at least for me. Soul Reaver was a mightiest weapon in previous games, but now things turned into slasher, you should hit 10 times a simple brigand with it to kill him. Also, many reused locations made playing it boring, there wasn't cool designed puzzles like in Soul Reavers. Maybe I'm too harsh on game, but back then I expected more.

My actual biggest disappointment in gaming is Disciples 3. The series meant a lot for me, and Disciples 3 was just... I have no words, it still feels bitter. After this, I was hating anime style for more than decade, and even forbade my girlfriend to have anime avatars.

 

[Nathir]

Diablo 3... Haven't bought a Blizzard game since.

 

[Hagashager]

Quest 64
I love magic and wizards. Even as a boy I loved it. A video-game where you can be a boy-adventurer who is also a wizard? Sign me up!
The game is shit. Youtube has documented this fact better than I ever can. I was there in 1998 though, waiting for it while everyone else waited for Ocarina of Time. I learned lessons from that game.

Spider-Man for N64
The PS1 version is far superior, but I did not have a PS1. I was stoked that it was on N64 only to find out it didn't have real cutscenes, played worse and looked worse.

The console port of Sims 2
This was when I was obsessed with Sims, but only had the PS2 to go off. The PS2 port seemed like my wish was fulfilled until I actually played it. The game's shit, a very pale reflection of its PC counterpart AND the weakest of all the console versions.

Kingdom Hearts
In middle achool this was the game all the tweens started getting obsessed with. In order to fit in better I played it. I got all hyped for the stupid thing and ended up being filtered completely. By the Tarzan level I was thinking, "What am I doing? I don't like JRPGs or Disney!"

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The big one.
I played Morrowind because I could not afford an Xbox 360 or PC that could run Oblivion. I loved Morrowind. It was a major departure point between my friends and I. *They* all played Kingdom Hearts II, *I* was the weirdo who played that crappy game with blue elves in a world that looked like actual feces. I remember telling my friends that Oblivion would school all of them. That they would all want Oblivion soon enough and that it would blow the pants off Morrowind, and Kingdom Hearts, and every RPG American or Japanese afterward.
It didn't...it...really didn't.
like Quest 64, Oblivion taught me lessons. Oblivion was the game that made me start questioning game reviews and ignore hype. After Oblivion there were no dissapointments because I never bought games willy nilly again.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The big one.
I played Morrowind because I could not afford an Xbox 360 or PC that could run Oblivion. I loved Morrowind. It was a major departure point between my friends and I. *They* all played Kingdom Hearts II, *I* was the weirdo who played that crappy game with blue elves in a world that looked like actual feces. I remember telling my friends that Oblivion would school all of them. That they would all want Oblivion soon enough and that it would blow the pants off Morrowind, and Kingdom Hearts, and every RPG American or Japanese afterward.
It didn't...it...really didn't.
like Quest 64, Oblivion taught me lessons. Oblivion was the game that made me start questioning game reviews and ignore hype. After Oblivion there were no dissapointments because I never bought games willy nilly again.

Yes, Oblivion was intense decline from Morrowind:

• Comprehensive scaling of enemies to the PC's level, such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive scaling of items to the PC's level, whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels.
• A clunky interface, which was clearly designed for consoles, in sharp contrast to Morrowind's sleek menus.
• Reduction in the number of joinable guilds/factions offering many quests from 10 in Morrowind to 4 in Oblivion, keeping the more generic ones (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guilds)
• Factions now centered around quest lines, with 2 of the 4 (Fighters Guild and Mages Guild) being poorly written and boring
• Full voice-acting for dialogue, which necessitated a drastic reduction in the amount of dialogue per NPC, most of whom have one comment about themselves or their city to offer and nothing else
• Poor writing in general, with dialogue and books less interesting than in Morrowind
• Minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking
• Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears
• Reduction in the number of skills to the point where axes are considered blunt weapons
• Regenerating magicka, which effectively means that all health can be easily regained after each combat, thus removing much of the logistics that existed previously
• Elimination of different physiques (and animations) for Argonians and Khajiits
• Both in-game and out-of-game world maps that offer far less information than their Morrowind equivalents
• Automatic fast-travel to any location that's already been visited
• A quest compass that points to your next destination, the use of which is made necessary by the combination of uninformative journal entries and an inability to ask directions
• Removal of levitation and teleportation spells, without the re-implementation of climbing that had existed in Daggerfall
• A lack of aesthetics, especially compared to Morrowind's brilliant art direction
• A generic, medieval fantasy grab-bag setting, without even the coherence offered by Daggerfall's Iliac Bay region much less the spectacular sui generis setting of Morrowind
• A dull, poorly-plotted main quest, with the only plane of Oblivion featured in the base game (except at the very end) being a generic hellscape with little variation
• A half-baked action-oriented combat system, such that success in combat depends greatly on the player's physical skill, yet is boring and tedious

Hardly any improvements were offered relative to Morrowind; even the technical advancements were usually blunders due to the poor implementation, as in the 3D Facegen software for customized faces, the wonky physics engine, or the HDR lighting.

 

[Beans00]

Disappointments for various reasons, roughly order of how disappointing they were versus my expectations

deus ex IW
nwn 1
fear 2
nwn 2
aoe 3
mm9
7th gen madden/ncaa football in general until ~2011-2012
fable
thief 4
grand theft auto 4
spider man x men arcades revenge
we're back(snes)
toy story(snes)
morrowind
doom 3/quake 4
empire total war, to a lesser extent rome 2 but I had less expectations
poe 1
gothic 3(which I played before gothic 1-2 which had been hyped up to me)
eu4, all paradox games after vic 2 minus stellaris
ff tactics advance
jurassic park 3(gba)
carmageddon 64
mario sunshine
donkey kong 64
ff8
cnc 3

I'm sure I forgot some

I would say dragon age origins but I already lost consumer confidence in bioware at that point.

Homm 4 isn't really a bad game, but its a big step down from homm 2/3.


Biggest console disappointment was the n64, mostly due to the controller.

 

[JDR13]

deus ex IW

gothic 3

Yes and yes.

Also, pretty much every Bioware game after Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[Inec0rn]

• Comprehensive scaling of enemies to the PC's level, such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive scaling of items to the PC's level, whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels.

There is an instant no buy from me in any game / any developer (not that there are any left I would loyally buy games from anymore anyway).

 

[Ash]

Biggest disappointment: All my favorite devs, all 100 of them lets say, shamelessly systematically selling out to cater to the average mediocre asf gamer. Everyone involved sucks.

I've a burning hatred for the N64 and most games on there. I also especially detest how Goldeneye is held up as the bees knees of FPS gaming of that era, when LANing Quake 2 and Hexen 2 at the college offices was way, way better.

Forget PC gaming for a moment, almost every other FPS on the very same console was leagues better than the average at best Goldeneye. Doom 64, Turok 1 & 2, Duke Nukem 64, Zero Hour, hell even Quake 1/2 and Hexen had cool ports on the N64, some even being very different games. The N64 was a shit console in almost every way and a stain upon the golden track record of the 90s, but one exception - it had some killer FPS the likes of these. Nukem 64 even had split screen co-op, that's crazy cool.

Most N64 kids never looked further than Goldeneye, or tried the other games and got owned because they expect at least a modicum of intelligence, skill and patience, and then proceeded to form a false narrative that all FPS was shit until Goldeneye came along. The game is not the worst thing ever but it was a significant clear drop in standards.

 

[Butter]

GTA 4 was my greatest disappointment. I still can't wrap my head around it. It's one thing to delude yourself into thinking you're a team of serious writers with a serious story to tell, but how did they ever convince themselves to scrap so many mechanics from the previous entry? Why did it have to be such a monumental decline?

 

[Ahnx]

Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dragon Age II
Hitman: Absolution
Divinity: Original Sin 3 aka BG3
Alan Wake
Elite: Dangerous (no promised offline mode)