Gaming Steve: Question of the Week: What Game was the Biggest Disappointment of 2007?

December 24, 2007

Question of the Week: What Game was the Biggest Disappointment of 2007?

Since I’m sure you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet let’s cut right to the chase this week and ask the question, " What Game was the Biggest Disappointment of 2007?"

I can think of a lot of big disappointments this year – Lair’s terrible controls, Two Worlds trying to be the next Oblivion (and failing miserably), Supreme Commander supremely boring gameplay – but my biggest disappointment this year was by far Hellgate: London.

After nearly four years of endless cover stories, previews, interviews, more previews the game was finally released on Halloween this year – and promptly disappeared off the face of the earth. Throw in the fact that this game was created by high level ex-Blizzard employees, and not just any employees but the employees who made the original Diablo, Hellgate: London was supposed to be Diablo III.

And boy did Bill Roper not let us forget it! In every single endless mention of the game Bill Roper did everything in their power to make you believe that Hellgate was everything that Diablo III was going to be and so much more.

Three dimensional worlds! Multiplayer co-op play! Tons of cool classes! Bill's face was everywhere from the smallest game publication to the New York Times, the PR campaign for this game was relentless and felt endless.

And then, finally, the game was released just a few months ago! So was Hellgate "Diablo III, only better?"

In a word, no. Instead we got an uninspired mess of a game that has a weird monthly fee structure, bland levels, boring gameplay, and countless technical problems right after launch. Diablo III? I think not. I would rather play a game of Rogue than this.

So what about you, what was your biggest disappointment of 2007?

Posted by Gaming Steve at 12:00 PM | Comments (34) | Posted to Poll |

Comments

Supreme Commander has to be my biggest disappointment. After hearing all of the gushing hype for this game, I actually booted up Total Annihilation to see what they were talking about and was very impressed. It seemed like it was going to be just massive mayhem and massive fun. Instead, it was massive boredom interrupted with periods of massive disappointment.

Base building was already my least favorite part of the "Traditional RTS" genre, and is a big reason why I embraced Total War and World in Conflict. But SC was the first game to make me truely HATE base building. Combined with the pathetic performance of the various units and the completely disappointing super units, the gameplay just totally bombed out of my interest.

Posted by Moose at December 24, 2007 1:27 PM

Need for Speed Prostreet royally sucked. It didn't do anything all that fantastic and the crash system (Which was supposed to be AMAZING) was crap with a side of crap.

Posted by PatMan33 at December 24, 2007 2:39 PM

Well, I said earlier that Hellgate: London was my choice for worst game of 2007.
But I can't say I had high expectations in the first place since I knew nothing about it. Sure, I saw everybody mention now and then for years, but I just didn't care.
Why would I want to play in London? What the hell is a hellgate?
...that's about as far as my investigations got, and I didn't even care enough to get the answers.

Oh well.

No, I'd say the biggest disappointment of the year would have to be something else for me.
Again, I've mentioned before that my choices for 2007 games are really limited.

Note: I've rewritten this post like six times now.
It's hard to come up with an interesting disappointment.
But you know, any and every game mildly disappoints in certain areas. No game is so good that it is without complaint.
This is why I believe all 10/10 scores are BS, but that's another issue.

What would disappoint me is if a game I was highly anticipating was a piece of crap... and I don't highly anticipate very many games.

But that's for 2008.

If I absolutely had to pick a disappointment from 2007, it would have to be Crysis. I didn't care much about this. Hell, my bro is the one who got it.
I guess I just tried it out for a bit to see what the deal was.
But the game simply would not let us. We're not ready.
It overheats our machines and locks 'em up.

If anything, we were just disappointed due to the fact that we invested money into a product that cannot be enjoyed until some undetermined time in the future where we -might- have better computers.
Even if we could play today, are we in for a superior storytelling and gameplay experience?
No, this thing is all about the graphical experience, an -extremely- superior graphical experience.

...one that I am apparently not allowed to discover until some faraway age where the game will very likely be edged out by others that give you a full package of gameplay, storytelling, and graphics.

Cock and bull, of the grandest style.
Though that's more a frustration or annoyance than a disappointment. I guess.

Eh.

Posted by Gauphastus at December 24, 2007 3:22 PM

assassin creed was way over rated the game sucks

Posted by chasegamez at December 24, 2007 3:48 PM

My biggest disappointment has to be Vanguard. Now, I wasn't one of those hardcore gamers that wanted a game to be an anti-WoW. I was looking for the other features.

I used to play Star Wars Galaxies. I was a crafter, lived in a player city, and was having the time of my life. Then the combat update happened. They promised a crafting update next, so I stuck around... instead, we got the NGE.

Ever since, I've been looking for a game that could take SWG's place. Vanguard seemed to be it, with their crafting systems and player housing and promised player towns. What I got instead was a terrible game that barely worked and didn't come close to what I originally looked for.

Posted by Fobok at December 24, 2007 6:10 PM

Well i did not find Supreme Commander to be that bad. Sure it was a bit disappointing compared to good old Total Annihilation. But it was not bad. I guess the speed should have been turned up. I remembered the shear amount of units one could spam even in the early part of TA. There was always something to do. SC is more of a waiting game.

One thing that disappointed me was C&C3. Not the hole game. Far from it. This is one of the most action filled RTS games since RA2 (which is both good and bad.) No the thing that disappointed me was the was the building system. I actually prefer the Dozer/Peon type building structure where I can just chick on the where i want my buildings and then go back to the battle field. The Conyard system always slowed me down a bit. Though it does a OK job at it and improves a lot on one the old Conyard system. (Is almost heresy to say that about C&C btw >_>)

As of most disappointed game... I am not sure. I often spot out bad games before there released. Most bad games i have i have bought (at a low price) knowing they where bad. Crysis seemed a bit disappointed gameplay wise but i never got to play it. Just watched my brother play it. It was disappointed to hear that Two Worlds was a failure but again i did not play it. And i did not have that great hopes for it. Shadow runner? Just disappointed what they did to the license but again something i did not play or expect to be good.

I guess i have just low expectations of games these days. The only major disappointed of 2007 is that i did not play more games.

Posted by Yokto at December 24, 2007 6:11 PM

My disappointment in 2007 was DDR Universe for Xbox 360. Konami, which is milking DDR to death, did not even playtest their game properly. There are many songs where the music stops, the arrows stop, but the level doesn't. This means in their "Quest Mode," any song picked that doesn't have the end-of-file marker is an automatic loss. In the arcade mode, you have to manually quit these songs, too.

That's what you get for only playtesting the beginnings of songs. As far as I know, it was never fixed. It's one of the greatest abuses of releasing broken games.

Posted by Robb at December 24, 2007 8:51 PM

I didn't play too many games, since I only got my 360 in August. So, mass effect. I thought it was good..but it could have been so much better. Dialogue, there was no actual interruption as they claimed there would be. Combat was either really easy or really hard (for me, at least). Tech skills were pointless..

Crysis, that's another game I played this year. It was ok. But the ending was just..stupid. And it was extremely difficult. The graphic, yeah, they were amazing. The physics were nice, but I didn't really see any real use for them besides just punching down houses or shooting down palm trees.

I'm sure there were more disappointing games, but I haven't played a large variety of games this year.

Posted by Gungnir at December 24, 2007 9:18 PM

I didn't play very many new games this year, but my pick would be STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. The promise this game held was kept close to my heart, even during all those years when others seemed to forget about it. I was expecting a seamless, living, breathing world in a unique, accurately reproduced setting.

What I got was a patchwork of interconnected levels in a partially accurately reproduced setting (with a lot of gameplay filler added in)...and the living-breathing part - well, that was partiall successful.

The promised RPG system didn't quite pan out the way I was hoping for either.

I'm not in any way saying it's a bad game; STALKER just wasn't what I had built up in my mind. It simply was another example of how the anticipation of something is generally much sweeter than the receiving of it.

Second place disappointment goes to Armed Assault, because I've had it for 6 months now and still haven't played more than 20 minutes of it - despite really wanting to!

Posted by T-BirD at December 24, 2007 10:04 PM

what about Halo 3? its not that bad of a game but i was the most over-hyped game out there. all it was, was halo 2 remade i hated that game

Posted by mr.cool at December 24, 2007 10:09 PM

Spore was the most disappointing game . . . because it wasn't released this year!

Posted by Byron Dunn at December 24, 2007 11:13 PM

I'd say Shadowrun. What a complete failed opportunity that was, in every sense.

Posted by TwistedBishop at December 24, 2007 11:41 PM

jesus. always one person on main site that has to respond to topics with “SPORE.. you know”

Posted by pikimini at December 24, 2007 11:47 PM

Blacksite Area 51 was one of the most boring and budget game looking unreal engine 3 games I have played on the PC.

Posted by isolated1 at December 25, 2007 1:25 AM

I have to say I was "disappointed" with almost every major title this year with the exception of Mario Galaxy, because in every blockbuster title I felt there was something significantly wrong to hold the game back from being "great". Crysis, was far cry, and was just plain boring, Assassins Creed had a lot of bullshit in it, and after you got done with the bullshit, it became very repetitive. Call of Duty 4, now listen carefuly before you crucify, Call of Duty 4 is a fantastic game, BUT! the perk system is astronomically absurd, there should be NO reason that ANYONE in the game should be able to have extra health or do more damage or drop a live grenade when they die, I don't care if it CAN be balanced by certain match-ups, the perk system is just plain bullshit, and often times dictates the outcome of a gun fight. not ALWAYS, but enough to damage the games over-all enjoyment. It's things like the perk system and Assassins Creeds lame future machine memory reading bullshit and Crysis being an over zealous Farcry remake that just make you want to be in the room when the people developing these games are suggesting these lame ideas so you can punch them square in the nose.

Posted by Jason Hoff at December 25, 2007 1:34 AM

Mass effect was deffinatly the worst game I played. i wish I could have experienced the story but it was very annoying having to wait through the dialog especially before a battle that I would die in and then have to start the dialog over. I learned quick to save after I DID ANYTHING! But still I couldn't take the elevators, vague tasks, and the GLITCHED OUT COMBAT! I was excited about everything in the game once I started playing and stuck with it but with orange box, halo, skate, bioshock, and cod4 all in My posession why waste time going through DIALOGUE!

Posted by Peeimp Sheeit at December 25, 2007 1:58 AM

@guy above

You can come up with better ideas and make better games? Jeez, u shud be glad u got the opportunity to play these games. I thoroghly enjoyed COD4 and still playing online on my 360. Best thing i love it the perk system. You never know who you're up against and the martydom perk is one of the best ones. I've died so many times and killed so many just cuz of that. Great ideas and also great single player campaign. Although short but still fullfilling if youre playing it on hardend or vet level. Dint pick up Asscreed yet as i hv mass effect to play.

Posted by sak500 at December 25, 2007 2:03 AM

I like this Jason Hoff fellow.
He seems like my kinda guy.

Posted by Gauphastus at December 25, 2007 3:02 AM

There seems to be some lively discussion going on here... might I suggest that it be continued on the forum where it will be easier to read and follow?

Posted by PatMan33 at December 25, 2007 3:16 AM

Not a huge diappointment but here goes.

Bioshock, loved the game and all, but at the end I was like 'That's it? I paid 60 bucks for this?' Lacked really any playablity after you beat it, and the lack of some sort of multiplayer was extremely disappointing.

Posted by Tarrock at December 25, 2007 3:49 AM

I agree that Hellgate London was the worst. High hop but bad game play and bugs that can't allow you to play for no more then an hour. Cap with the the fact that it divided the community in two with their pay and free model. It is either one or the other but not both because costumers will think it is a bait and switch model.

Supreme Commander has one if not the worst UI system in a RTS at launch and that fact that Company of Heroes game play was far superior.

Posted by jdun at December 25, 2007 3:56 AM

Well i have to agree Hellgate London was NOT what i expected, being a huge fan of RPG games it was a dissapointment, however i can say the same about Mass Effect, I mean the combat?! What the hell? - Awful

I think supreme commander was better than most of these games, it is not total Anhilation i know but it still beats the schapps out of most of the games mentionned here.

Assassins Creed, also a very big let down, was going to buy it, then rented it instead, glad i did. Halo 3 was more like halo 1 (Assault Rifle) which made it better than halo 2 in a way, lacking a clan feature though, which was a huge letdown.

I am however looking forward to universe at war, looks a bit like a Supremme Commander Rip off, but who knows, maybe i will need to build a better PC to play this, But alas everyone has different preferences to games, My friend loved Mass Effect but he hated RPG's so..... Each to their own!

Posted by Crozza at December 25, 2007 9:36 AM

Honestly, Hellgate wasn't my worst game of the year because I knew it wasn't going to be Diablo III. It is Hellgate: London, and if people looked at it like that, they would see a mediocre game instead of this Diablo III that someone took a dump on.

For worst game of the year, my vote goes to Sword of the New World. It's another Korean grindfest, with a historical theme but NO historical accuracy. Free to play until level 20, but once you decide to pay, the GRIND starts. I swear, it takes one day to hit 20, then takes 3 days to hit 21. Snore! The gameplay was so-so, but the ability to AFK grind with no punishment or side effects other than no loot puts this game at the bottom, sorry.

Posted by Baldafor at December 25, 2007 1:42 PM

Supreme Commander: Played it a little bit, and realized that it wasn't my type of game. It was just too "clinical" and boring. I'm more into WarCraft, StarCraft and C&C.

Call of Duty 4: It's fun, but inferior to COD1. It's just yet another example of the dumbing down PC games in order to suit the console controll-scheme and average Joe market. It will require a ton of tweaking with mod-making to make it good -- if then.

STALKER: I like this game, but it's sad to see that it's so damn buggy; with several elements that feel rushed and poorly implemented, despite the long development time.

I'm mostly disappointed with most games that has come out the last few years. What keeps me playing games are older games -- meaning, mid-90s till early 2000.

Posted by Inglorion at December 25, 2007 4:00 PM

BTW, I wonder why Steve hasn't mentioned Company of Heroes on his podcast yet. Maybe he hasn't played it.

Posted by Inglorion at December 25, 2007 4:02 PM

Inglorion:

Actually I love Company of Heroes, but that came out last year, sort of when I went "on a break". But that was a fantastic game and really challenging.

I have NOT played the expansion, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, which did come out this year. Somehow that game got totally lost in the mix, happens all the time and its a shame that I have heard so little about this game.

But once I get through some of the "core" games released this year in a few weeks it will get quiet and I'll give that game a try.

Posted by Gaming Steve at December 25, 2007 4:12 PM

That's easy Assassin's Creed.

Posted by Bosnique at December 25, 2007 4:50 PM

Am I the only person who thought Kane & Lynch was a massive hype wave surfing ass fest?

Posted by Moogy at December 25, 2007 6:28 PM

Call of Duty 4 should be rename Call of Campers 4. The game wasn't what I was hopping for. Too many campers and too little teamwork. Unlike TF2 the modes in CoD4 doesn't force teamplay.

Posted by jdun at December 25, 2007 10:38 PM

In my experience Hellgate: London is actually a game that gets better as you understand it more. I think the game suffers from a criminal lack of information about the core mechanics that will eventually affect a players "end game" experience. The manual that comes with the boxed game has only the basics needed to get the game installed and the player started off.

The skill tree and the feed system that dictates what weapons, modifications and armour a player can use in unison is quite intricate. To begin with though it's a confusing and frustrating experience as you sometimes pick up offensive, defensive and elemental items that can't be used to their full potential until the player reaches a certain experience level.

Then there's the augmentation route that also has a steep learning curve and a sometimes mildly irritating dice roll aspect that can mean the extra powers imprinted into your gear are sometimes not for your class. You can also upgrade your weapon and inadvertently disable the mods you fitted to it earlier because the class of the weapon is now higher than the mod range.

Once you learn all of these things though the game does become quite interesting and has a depth that isn't apparent when you first start playing. Collecting loot and either breaking it down to use for crafting, or doing extended killing runs to build up your money reserves to augment a weapon or buy a higher class rifle or sword is actually quite addictive. Nothing drives a player on more though than the chance of that rare or elite demon/beast/necro/spectral dropping a quality piece of legendary or unique loot that you can either sell for a nice wedge or equip to make yourself stronger.

In short, the game has a steep learning curve that is made all the harder by the crass lack of documentation. It also suffered from an incredibly buggy launch coupled with a seemingly pointless subscriber system. A lot of the early bugs have been fixed though and some minor new content was added just before the holiday period. There is a Stonehenge expansion on the test server that has gotten a huge thumbs up from even the most negative of the HG:L community. This is definitely a game that gets better the more you play it. Play through on normal and then take the game on in Nightmare mode to see the real game at work.

Posted by Keith at December 26, 2007 3:59 AM

I dont c how some people can say that Assassins Creed was a bad game, for what they aimed, the whole idea of the game, and the studies they did to make the game, i think they did an awesome job. Same goes for Halo 3, yes it was very hyped up and all which i was getting annoying as well, but the game itself was amazing. Wishing it was a bit longer but even so the multiplayer made up for that. But i will say that for me the worse game i have played for the 360 will be Stranglehold. It was just too boring, right after the first level i was falling asleep. It was the same thing over and over and over and it tried so hard to be like a great game called Max Payne.

Posted by Ricky at December 26, 2007 4:30 PM

Hellgate is a lot better now that it is all patched and more content is being added. Still a lot of potential in the game. It just may take a year before it lives up to its potential. I rather enjoy it myself.

Posted by Ralsar at December 27, 2007 2:22 PM

I fully agree. I was so excited for Hellgate. I love action RPGs, with gear and stats... but HGL is so boring. And what the heck is up with the 'randomly generated levels'. If a level is called Piccadilly Approach and I enter it and its tunnels, the same tunnels I've seen 100 times before, then I log out, come back in and the next time I see Piccadilly Approach its a street... the same street I've seen 100 times... it's mind numbingly boring (and makes no sense)! I love the gear, stats, modding weapons, and the look of your char, but a very big part of the game, the levels, are repetitive and boring. It drove me back to Titan Quest.

As for Crysis - the game ends for me when you enter the spaceship, but the levels before that are some of the most amazing replayable levels in my book. There are so many ways to go about finishing levels. I loved farcry for the choices it provided, and I love Crysis just as much. Not to mention it looks amazing. And the level editing... I'm adding the nuke gun to levels to see how much dmg I can do. Lots of fun!

Posted by Fuzz at December 27, 2007 8:08 PM

HERE it goes my wrost game of the year by far is HALO 3 ALL OVER HYPED. CAMPIGN crap. Mutiplayer the same example: 5 year old screaming in the mic cant play the game and a inmature person comes on your a queer or something.Assianss creed good not brillant COD4 brillant and perks do rune it.I have 360 and PC of cod4 and pc is better yes you do camp but theres is modes u cant camp more about team work sreach and destory.

Posted by MaskedGameguru at December 27, 2007 9:00 PM