The Most Disappointing Game You've Ever Played

[Crispy]

^^

Good choice there. That game was a travesty.

 

[Turjan]

At least it had a demo, so I didn't waste any money on it. Which is one of the reasons I didn't mention it in this thread.

 

[Surf Solar]

First time I hear about Pool of Radiance, looked for some screenshots, it looks nice. Is it the gameplay that is so bad?

 

[Turjan]

Clunky controls, and the worst sin a game can perform: It's completely boring with an endless dungeon of always the same enemies.

 

[octavius]

Clunky controls, and the worst sin a game can perform: It's completely boring with an endless dungeon of always the same enemies.

Mark Buchignani seems to have been the lead designer.
He and Dan Daglow were the main designers of the Savage Frontier Gold Box games. Gateway to the Savage Frontier had the worst encounter design of all the Gold Box games except Matrix Cubed, but it was interesting to see how much Daglow's design had improved in Treasures of the Savage Frontier, while the weakest areas were designed by Buchignani. I guess he hadn't learnt by the time of Ruins of Myth Drannor either...

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Even if you beaten the game, there was a bad ending for the player. Uninstalling it and having a partition wiped out was biggest WTF! moment.

 

[Night Goat]

Somehow I forgot Myth III. Okay, that was the most disappointing game; not the worst, but it fell a long way from its predecessors.

 

[himmy]

Oblivion. You don't even understand. Morrowind was everything to me. I was obsessed with Morrowind even before I even saw how it looks or what is was. With no Internet and just the CDs from Romanian game magazines to keep me company, I ended up reading game guides on DLH. A walkthrough for Pirate of the Caribbean mentioned at some point a similarity with Morrowind. I started reading guides to the great houses and info on where to get glass armor, while having no idea what sort of game this was. When I finally managed to get my hands on it (a horribly ripped vanilla version) I played it for hundreds of hours. I spent half my high-school only having the icon for Morrowind (full version, after a while) and Winamp on my desktop. When I first read about Oblivion I was in Heaven. I spent months on the Bethesda forums, amassing hundreds of forum posts and debating people on lore minuscule details from Morrowind that I hoped will be expanded on in Oblivion. I wrote weekly updates on the Romanian PCGames Magazine forums in which I detailed to the ignorant masses the beauty that was about to be bestowed on them. I made motherfucking digests of Todd's posts from the official forums. I replayed Morrowind and looked for every detail in quests or books that could pertain to the land of Cyrodil, that I was soon to explore. I upgraded my PC.

And then the game came out, I played it, and with every identical Oblivion gate that I closed and every identical dungeon and every Guild quest that seemed to go nowhere, a part of me died. I became a broken man, incapable of love or empathy.


Also, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Risen 2 and Broken Sword III.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

What a shitty game to waste birthday money on.

I've got a Collector's Edition of that, worst D1P ever .

and it had the habit of nuking your hd upon uninstallation.

 

[Cassidy]

I mentioned Dreamfail, but I think something recently surpassed that in the degree of disappointment, with it being a game seriously overrated by many people in the Codex, specially the usual Obsidian fanboys, such game being New Vegas. Because Dreamfail had near zero gameplay, it didn't feel as disappointing because it took less time to end and there was nothing it could have been instead in its shape. New Vegas on the other hand was a genuine broken dream for what it is instead of what it could have been(Van Buren) and because of the immense amount of DERP that only gets ignored by the usual fanboys because Obsidian wrote it instead of Bethesda. Hell, now that I finally got to playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl I have to admit those Ukrainians are way better than modern Obsidian at storywriting[/skyway]. STALKER has a far more interesting plot, a world with a much greater atmosphere and suspension of disbelief not even Urkanistanian-English translation issues can overshadow, and most importantly, it is a much superior game overall that doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. I already posted my impressions about NV elsewhere:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...dom-and-curiousity-and-tried-new-vegas.86129/

 

[Clockwork Knight]

and it had the habit of nuking your hd upon uninstallation.

All games will have that bug in the near future, patched out when you purchase the BugFix DLC.

 

[CSM]

What I've always wondered is: is the world in Ultima 8 drifting in space, or is just the worst designed water in the history of video games?

 

[taxalot]

Are not all worlds drifting in space?

 

[Night Goat]

Oblivion. You don't even understand. Morrowind was everything to me. I was obsessed with Morrowind even before I even saw how it looks or what is was. With no Internet and just the CDs from Romanian game magazines to keep me company, I ended up reading game guides on DLH. A walkthrough for Pirate of the Caribbean mentioned at some point a similarity with Morrowind. I started reading guides to the great houses and info on where to get glass armor, while having no idea what sort of game this was. When I finally managed to get my hands on it (a horribly ripped vanilla version) I played it for hundreds of hours. I spent half my high-school only having the icon for Morrowind (full version, after a while) and Winamp on my desktop. When I first read about Oblivion I was in Heaven. I spent months on the Bethesda forums, amassing hundreds of forum posts and debating people on lore minuscule details from Morrowind that I hoped will be expanded on in Oblivion. I wrote weekly updates on the Romanian PCGames Magazine forums in which I detailed to the ignorant masses the beauty that was about to be bestowed on them. I made motherfucking digests of Todd's posts from the official forums. I replayed Morrowind and looked for every detail in quests or books that could pertain to the land of Cyrodil, that I was soon to explore. I upgraded my PC.

And then the game came out, I played it, and with every identical Oblivion gate that I closed and every identical dungeon and every Guild quest that seemed to go nowhere, a part of me died. I became a broken man, incapable of love or empathy.

Good post. When I got Oblivion, I was disappointed because it wouldn't run on my computer. Now I know how lucky I was.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you can't be as disappointed in oblivion as somebody who preordered the collector's edition.
it's going to haunt me from that shelf forever.

 

[DalekFlay]

you can't be as disappointed in oblivion as somebody who preordered the collector's edition.
it's going to haunt me from that shelf forever.

I liked in the "making of documentary" where the whole Bethesda staff had orgasms over getting Patrick Stewart to read 10 lines for them. Really shows the mindset and priorities of developers.

 

[octavius]

I liked in the "making of documentary" where the whole Bethesda staff had orgasms over getting Patrick Stewart to read 10 lines for them. Really shows the mindset and priorities of developers.

Not just the developers.
All the name dropping in this GOG thread was disturbing.

 

[Stokowski]

Settlers 3
Football Manager 2013
Neverwinter Nights

 

[Minttunator]

What I've always wondered is: is the world in Ultima 8 drifting in space, or is just the worst designed water in the history of video games?

There actually are parts of the world that are seemingly drifting in space (Mythran's house), the water is just really deep for some reason - so deep it immediately kills you the instant you set foot in it. :D

 

[Clockwork Knight]

you can't be as disappointed in oblivion as somebody who preordered the collector's edition.
it's going to haunt me from that shelf forever.

I liked in the "making of documentary" where the whole Bethesda staff had orgasms over getting Patrick Stewart to read 10 lines for them. Really shows the mindset and priorities of developers.

They have the mindset of the average nerdlinger? Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, though...

 

[DalekFlay]

There actually are parts of the world that are seemingly drifting in space (Mythran's house), the water is just really deep for some reason - so deep it immediately kills you the instant you set foot in it. :D

I thought it was implied that sea monster ate you if you fell in.

 

[hoverdog]

Football Manager 2013

Haven't played the last one - what's so disappointing about it?

 

[Stokowski]

Football Manager 2013

Haven't played the last one - what's so disappointing about it?

I hadn't played since the 2008 version and was looking forward to the shiny new 3D graphics. Which were fine (not great, but serviceable). But that only went to show how utterly fubar the match engine was.
Plus:
- contract negotiations are meaningless (there's no negotiation; you take it or leave it).
- there are fewer working mind-games/media interactions than in 2008.
- training has become ... weird.
- UI has become a chore to dig through.
- mentoring system not properly explained.

In essence, it has become a big bloated pile of poop with fewer working features than the old 2D days. All Hail the Decline!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What I've always wondered is: is the world in Ultima 8 drifting in space, or is just the worst designed water in the history of video games?

There actually are parts of the world that are seemingly drifting in space (Mythran's house), the water is just really deep for some reason - so deep it immediately kills you the instant you set foot in it. :D

True, Mythran's house is supposed to be in the Etheral Void, so that's explainable. It's just that normal water looks so similar to the Void that I can understand the connection.

Ultima 8 is by far the best example I know of, where the manual and in-game lore try to cover up the fact that the game is not only inferior to its predecessor, but unfinished as well. They couldn't fit daylight cycles into the game, so they came up with Pagan being in a perpetual state of twlight, and added tons of mushrooms to the flora to add to the illusion.

 

[Mortmal]

For me it was Lionheart, hands down. Setting had so much potential if used right, but instead we got banal shit boring game with incredibly sucky combat. Argh.

Utterly disapointed by this too, and funny thing is its how i discovered the codex while posting my anger on black isle forum. Ultima 9 is a close contender although.