Most disappointing game of 2004
 

OK since we have a thread for GOTY 2004, I figured I'd start a thread for the most disappointing game of the year since there are no threads on it (I think, search didn't find any).

My nomination goes to Doom3. For all the hype and talk this game has to take the prize. Maybe it's just me but walking around in complete darkness with a flashlight in endless repetition is just not fun.

The most fitting words I can think of to describe Doom3 comes from Andre Linoge in the Stephen King movie "Storm of the Century" and they are:

"Hell is repetition"

Oh how true it is for this game.

--jaded

Fable

For all the time that it took to develop, it should've really been much longer. I'm not saying that Fable was a bad game, but there really should've been more.

Ditto for Doom 3. I was just... underwhelmed by the flashlight mechanics.

Star Wars Battlefront. LucasArts continues its "hit or miss" ways.

While I agree that Doom3 was far from perfect, the most disappointing game for me was; Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within.

I just started playing it and so far, it sucks. I doubt very much that I will finish it.

The gameplay is just way too different from the first POP (Sands of Time). POP:WW is much darker and more violent than was SOT and much more focused on swordplay rather than puzzle solving. Also, what happened to the thematicly friendly Arabian music from the first one? If I wanted to hear shitty synth-metal I'd buy a LimpBizkit CD.

Oh, BattleFront also sucked, but that's no surprise.

Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. Looked amazing before it came out, now I think its total garbage.

Fable

What a waste of money that game was.

Definately Doom 3. I gave it many, many chances, and it just never redeemed itself. :\

definitely Fable.
and the ending for HALO2 pissed me off something rotten as well... but that doesn't mean to say that the game itself wasn't brilliant.

Another vote for Doom 3 - It was ok but should have been far better with the amount of time it took to produce.

Lords of the Realm 3 hands down. I had much hope for this game as the 2nd one was excellent in almost every way. So very sad. In retrospect I should have known something was wrong when it was priced $20 on launch day.

Man I didn't like EQ 2 and Fable is on my list of disappointments as well.

Doom 3. It was cool for a while, but now I'm like "what the hell was I thinking?" I didn't quite finish it, and I'm never going back.

Looks like we have a console vs pc bad game fight going on. I have a PC and will go with Doom3 also. Wasnt a stinker, but with all the hype and time it could have been better.

Results so far...

PC - Doom3
Console - Fable

Star Wars - Battlefront: it just felt incredibly boring and shallow, especially for a Star Wars game.

Half-Life 2: again, this game felt shallow and lacked purpose. It's physic innovations were fantastic but served no real purpose other than to show off when the intention of the game is to be a revolutionary epic with a strong storyline pulling it along.

Ninja Gaiden: sure it's pretty but so incredibly boring!

Need for Speed Undeground 2: basically part one with a free roam feature and even dumber AI.

Hyper Street Fighter II (PAL): missed out on SFIII and played like a hacked arcade version of SFII (to counter this though the Xbox version was fucking brilliant).

Mortal Kombat Deception: chess Kombat was cool, konquest was cool, puzzle kombat was cool but the core ingredient, the actual fighting, was poor and sub-standard.

Spiderman 2: I can't honestly see why this game was being praised so much, it looked horrendous and was nothing new or exciting. The missions were bland and uneventful and overall it was just an average movie tie-in.

Prince of Persia - Warrior Within: they took part one and stripped away all the clever goodness about it, added a pathetic cliched heavy metal score and turned the game into an 'edgy' and 'alternative' bloodfest. What a fucking joke.

Calk up another vote for Doom 3. It was one of te most boring games I have played in my entire life. Not ever have I been bored with a game within the first half hour of playing it.

Killzone. Was supposed to be this massive Halo killer. Yup, it sucks. So much for the halo 2 pwnage.

Add another tally for Doom 3. God, the only amusement I had from that game was changing the flashlight in the game to a picture of Jesus. Certainly scared those demons away.

Halo 2
Fable

Both overhyped and underwhelming.

Doom 3 gets my vote. The flashlight trick was interesting the first 2 times, but building an entire game around it got ridiculous. They called the keys PDAs in this version, but it was still a nearly linear, key-driven shooter. It would have been great in a time before games like Half Life and Deus Ex moved us past that sort of thing, but its just a bunch of tired mechanics wrapped up in new paper.

Doom 3 was scary, but wasn't as engaging as many of the other games I played. Fable didn't quite live up to the hype, and I think Peter Molyneux knew that. However, I did enjoy that game thoroughly and was much more engaged by it than Doom 3.

So my vote is for Doom 3. They tried to accomplish the anti-thesis of Quake 3, and while Carmack can write a good engine, I'm less than impressed with their story telling abilities.

doom3, i played it for a few hours and became thoroughly bored and uninstalled. haven't second thought it since

Wow I'm glad someone mentioned Lords of the Realm 3

What a piece of shit... LOTR 2 was such a rad game too... Sad

Fable is on here? Ya know guys... if you ignore the hype then the games actually attain that fun factor that the hype was trying to say. I ignore it all, I listen enough to see whats coming out and cool features, then I shut it off until its released. I do the same with movies and it makes things MUCH more enjoyable in the end. As for Spidey 2.. it was praised because you can spend an hour just web slinging around and jumping buildings... running across the entire city sideway on a building..... Thats why so many of us love it

For me it was Tribes: Vegeance. I love tribes.. I still play Tribes2.. but they fucked this one up. The Single player isn't bad sure.. but its not Tribes. This is just a new game with the Tribes title. The mutliplayer just doesn't have the Tribes feel... I'm still playing UT when I played Vengeance.. it wasn't a Tribes feel.. but UT. If I wanted UT I'd play UT... not Tribes. Then another beef... The reason you couldn't go prone in Tribes 2 is because that wasn't a part of FPSs yet. But now it is and Tribes is known for large Multiplayer maps and snipers that can hide 2 miles away. Now tell me.. wouldn't it make a bit more sense to go prone on the top of that mountain instead of standing out like a sore thumb? Once it hits the bargain bin I'll buy it for the SP.. but thats about it. They completely ruined it for me.

Fable.

"Disappointment" means hearing a lot of hype about a game that can't live up to it. That's basically what the topic of the thread is :P Yes, Fable was extremely disappointing, because they promised so much, and delivered so little.

wow, lords of the realm. That brings back some great memories *sniff*. My vote goes for Halo 2. Still play the first one religiously.

Cheers to jmad for having the balls to vote for Halo 2. Doom 3 was just OK and Fable simply annoying so my vote also goes to Halo 2. If MS was smart they would make Halo their launch game for each new console. I personally wouldn't have minded the wait if it was a better game.

Yet another one for Doom3.

I really, really tried to like it. I even thought it was pretty good, at first, until HL2 came out. Since then, I've beaten Half-Life once already and I'm about 85% through a second play-through, plus I've replayed a few assorted chapters. In Doom, I'm still less than halfway through the first time. Half-Life has one too many show-off-the-physics-engine teeter-totter puzzles, but overall it's just better designed and more compelling.

Doom 3 for me as well. It was scary for all of 2 minutes then it devolved into repetative teleport ambushes. Yawn.

Fable by a long shot. Looked great, but had nothing to support all the ground breaking, genre smashing hype that was put out about it. What ashame, it had so much potential.

Killzone would be a runner up, but I was in on the beta testing for that, so it wasn't much of a suprise to me that it wasn't all they hyped it to be.

Mine are HALO 2 for XBOX and Yu Yu Hakusho for ps2.
Halo is very repetative and First person shooters are all starting to feel the same.
As for Yu Yu Hakusho. Good charater graphics and selection but the stupid controlls, ugly backgrounds and stupid music really disappointed me because I liked the show.

Another vote for doom 3. The game just got very boring to me after the first couple of hours. Sure it was scary, but I need a better story than what it offered. :rolleyes:

Doom 3, what a shitty game. All graphics and no substance.

I can't believe I'm the first person to say GTA: San Andreas. Don't get me wrong, I played all the way through and had a great time, but it just wasn't as good as Vice City. Sure it's a lot bigger, there are more varied missions, the vehicles are better..., now that I think about it, everything in San Andreas was done bigger and better than the previous new generation GTA games. It just simply wasn't as fun. For all the hype, I thought it was going to blow my mind. It entertained me and kept me coming back until I got 100%, but after that I took the disk out and popped Vice City back in for my favorite aspect of the game. The random, running around mayhem.

In conclusion, San Andreas was good fun, but after all the hype I was disappointed.

Heh, like I said in another thread, you'd think we'd have learnt by now that no game ever lives up to the hype.

Except Metroid Prime *giggle*

I'm a bit (well, a lot) of a cynical bastard when it comes to big-buget mainstream games that the current generation of fanboys proclaims mindlessly to be the best game ever (Halo 2, Half Life 2, Doom 3 etc) so I'm never surprised to find out that, when they do come out, they're not that great. So the biggest disappointment for me, this year, would have to be finding out that Gladius wasn't being carried by any stores in Australia. Spewing.

I disagree a bit here. I think WoW was pretty hyped and it certainly has lived up to it in my opinion. Maybe not as hyped as Halo 2, Doom3 and Fable but still.

--jaded

I'm starting to notice that fanboys aren't about praising a game that they enjoy anymore...it's about bashing good games instead. No longer is it Sega sux and Nintendo rox or Sony sux dix with Microsux. Now it's Halo 2, Half-Life 2, San Andreas, MGS 3, and every other game released this year are terrible games that are extremely disappointing. I'm starting to notice a major trend. Most of these fanboys will not accept that some games simply live up to their hype. Most of these fanboys will not accept that just because a game doesn't do everything that was promised doesn't mean it is a bad game. And it's really starting to annoy the shit outta me.

-Lasereth

Doom 3.

I paid ~$2,000 for the guts of a new PC then bought two games to put it through its paces. HL2 and Doom3.

I'm still playing HL2 (only get free time when the wife isn't around!). I played the beginning of Doom3 for about 15 minutes. YAWWWWNNN....

CHING CHING, you just picked up an armour shard.

Gimme a break...


Mr Mephisto

I dunno Las, there are some issues with these games. I was disappointed in several. Not that they weren't good games, but the companies built us up for a grand adventure and didn't deliver. Halo 2 was supposed to be just like the first, only better. Well, it's not like the first. It's got some improvements, but also some comprimises. The stuff they comprimised on was some of the stuff I personally liked. So... I'm a little rough on them. They may not have comprimised on the stuff you liked about it. I hope that's the case. But, paying fifty bucks entitles you to an opinion.

Well critiquing a game is fine but the guys I'm talking about say the games are complete trash. That's what gets on my nerves.

-Lasereth

I agree totally with you Lasereth, it really gets on my nerves as well

Amen. A few flaws does not a shitty game make. I guess one could use the term hater everytime someone else says fanboy.

True enough, but a few flaws does not a perfect game make, either. You'd think Jesus himself had blessed the titles, the way some people act about them.

i actually liked prince of persia WW!

anyways, same goes for me, doom 3. and console.. hmmm FF X-2 .. (that was this year right??)

Doom Three.
Expected something much different.
Spending years on such intricate level, texture and character design, and then not being able to see any of it = retarded.
Glad I didn't upgrade for it.

Hasn't anyone made a mod for Doom 3 that has a decent light? It wouldn't be hard, I'm sure.

Doom3 deinfatly. I held the stupid flashlight more than I held a gun!

It would have been fine if you could have the flashlight on while holding a gun like you can in HalfLife. You would still have the moodiness of things being dark but you could see what you're shooting at. Even having a weapon like the shotgun have a flashlight attached would have worked. We have guns like that NOW... why not in the future?!

Also, having the monsters hiding behind paneling in the walls that open up when you're around?! That's just stupid. It was fine for a game 10 years ago, but if you're going for realism it just doesn't work!

What a let down. If I were a game developer I would go with HalfLife 2's engine rather than Doom 3's.

Fable, ok game with good graphics and gameplay, but too easy to beat and not enough weapons or armor to make it interesting.. Halo 2 could have been better.

Duct Tape mod for Doom 3
 

i wonder if id will get the picture, on second thought no, doom3 made how many millions of dollars in sales PLUS the money the will make from licenses ... at least raven is doing Q4, i think they see the bigger picture.

I'll agree with this one. LotRealm 2 was excellent for its time, but 3 was a definite step backwards.

Flame me all you want, but it would be a 2-way tie between Fable and GTA: San Andreas. Fable was doomed first and formost by its creator because we turned on the hype machine a little too much. Had i have lesser expectations for the game i might have gave it a little more time and liked it. GTA, atleast for me, seems like its the same thing everygame with nothing new. Yes they add more gameplay in the form of the territories, weapons, bigger areas, and all that. But at the core its still the same thing. They need to give the series a break and revamp the whole game for the next-gen.

That's funny, because when I read about the tattoos and the way food affects your weight in GTA:SA, I instantly though that it was much better implemented version of what Fable wanted to do.

Fable. Hype or no hype it was at best, an okay game.

EDIT: Did I say anything? Nope.. Nope I didn't, carry on.
*Whistles*

Fable - didnt live up to the hype

Wow.. no mention of that ultra-shitacular, overly hyped, celebrity loaded, bugged outta it's mind, with an extra dash of horrible play control known as Driv3r? I mean c'mon that game had to be the biggest shitball of 2004. Gripes about Fable being too short, Doom 3 being shallow, Half-life 2 not living up to promises, all aside.. Driv3r was the worst thing I've seen in a long time. It's almost bad enough to "drive" an honest person to piracy.

Buahaha...I hear the cell phone game version of Driv3r was better than the console version.

I'd have to say Doom 3. Although it was brilliant the first time I played it, there was absolutely NO replay value. This was a huge shock in terms of how it failed to recreate one of the dominant traits of the Doom series.

Harping on most everyone else, I would say Doom 3. I don't mind the flashlight stuff though, that didn't bother me. I liked doom 3, but I hated the fact that I felt like I was killing the same 4 monsters over and over and over... and why is it that every single person that became a zombie or died looked exactly the same? Couldn't they have made a few more models for dead mars base people?

They could have, but everyone seems to miss the fact that Doom 3 was little more than a tech demo. I think the players tried to turn it into a game, then started hating it.

I have played Fable quite a bit and I have to say I really like it. I think the trick to it is to come at the game from many different angles. Make several different characters and see what happens if you do different things. Become totally evil or totally good. The game has a lot more replay value for me than most games.

I would have to say Soldner: Secret Wars. Sounded awesome, and they had some great ideas, but it was just so poorly done.

However, I did like Fable. Even if it's way to short.

Fable
Runner-Up Halo 2

Doom 3 :-(

I liked Fable, of course i hadn't heard anything about it before I played it. Doom 3 was fun for a while which is what I was expecting it to be. ID never makes good games they just make good game engines. What I was disappointed in was RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. The game play was OK, but it was buggy as hell.

Gran Turismo 4 because it keeps on getting pushed back and back and back... better be a really good game!

that was the most upsetting game of 2k4 (at least fo rme)

Doom3

Thought the game would be something more,but it was just eye candy

I'm going to hop on the bandwagon and throw my vote in for Doom 3. I liked seeing my old friends in new skin suits. But I hated shooting a wall in the dark with a shotgun...turning the flashlight on to see that I shot the wall...turn to see whats hitting me and shooting it.

I DID like that it was scary as hell (no pun intended) if youve got a good surround sound and only played it in the dark *like I myself did*. Weirdly and unfortunatly its missing some kind of "play me" quality..because you couldnt play it but for 1-3 hours max before taking a break. Before you know it..your 3 hours from the end..and its been a month since youve played it. I didnt think it was all bad..it made me jump a few times.

For console (and WAY above doom 3) ill give the 2nd vote to FFX-2. Yes Leserath the game was complete utter garbage. Being a final fantasy 'fanboy' I was ashamed to pickup the controller and felt I should burn the room FFX-2 was in to purify it. There was nothing Final Fantasy about it...it was a title to sell.

defintely doom3. its like all they cared about was creating the engine, and then actually making the game was an afterthought. it could have / should have been so much better.

As per popular opinion, my vote's going to Doom III. I wasn't very hyped about that game at all, and I was still disappointed. What does that say about it?

I'm also agreeing with GakFace and Tribes: Vengeance. Tribes 2 is still one of my all-time favourite games. But Vengeance just isn't Tribes. My biggest complaint was that they got rid of the sleek, uber-fast fighter planes and gave us a bunch of floating balls. What could they have been thinking?

I agree with the FFX-2 thing.. but ehh.. the second PP was nice.. it was one of the few games i was addicted to and wanted to finish. Too short though.

World of Warcraft, I really expected revolutionary change. Yet, it was the same shit.

Madden 2005.

Star Wars Battlefront.

I'm going to say Fable, but I'm going to throw in Growlanser as well. The story isn't bad, and I knew going into it that it was old-school graphics, but some of the graphics blow even worse than I could have imagined. I've got to play it a bit more since this is just my first reaction, but I wasn't nearly as impressed as I was expecting to be, especially for a game that was delayed numerous times.

Are you serious?

I played the first Halo at my buddy's place and it licked rectum, Haven't tryed Halo 2. But Killzone owns every shooter game i have tryed for PS2 online anyways, The actual offline game isn't great..But you can tell Killzone was made purly for online play. It's sick.